Doctors, specialists can now advertise

[jeffooi]

THE STAR
Thursday, November 28, 2002

Doctors, specialists can now advertise
Update from the Star News Desk

KUALA LUMPUR: Private sector specialists and doctors will now be able to advertise themselves and services.

This follows government’s decision to further liberalise advertising laws in the country.

Health Minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng said today that those in the private sector could now advertise using their photographs (something not allowed in the past), their area of specialisation and expertise, years of experience and where they graduated from.

They could do so on the website and via brochures.

FULL STORY:
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp...rss&sec=latest

[joker2107]

"This follows government’s decision to further liberalise advertising laws in the country. "

datuk, u gotta differentiate advertising laws and professional etiquette.

will ur counterpart in the legal profession now quote the same "government's decision"?

there is no doubt that the public concensus is that cost of private health care has sky rocketted through the roof. i must admit that this is in part due to the inaction or inability of the govt to act to birng in essential imported health care products cheaply. more importantly, as i have queried at a recent public forum on the subject, is won't the enormous cost of decorating private hospitals to shame even six star hotels be borne by patients and insurance companies?

now u want to add in advertising expenses to our bills.

come on, how many so called specialists who would dare to advertise their services actually cannot afford a ferrari?

and how many of them actually need advertising to bring them more patients when a good number of them already have far too little time to spend on each patient to justify their charges?

pls mr minister, get back to the basics of servitude first. u cannot build a house by building the roof first.

[kwchang]

It is quite obvious this is in line with the recent push to promote "medical tourism" as a lot of our Asian neighbours do come over here for medical treatment. Hence the aloowance for Internet advertising will go some distance to this end.

Hey, can you deny that the recent local liver transplants from live donors and successful separations of co-joined twins highlighted in the newspapers are in reality advertisements of the expertise we have in Malaysia? Why do you think some of the ops were free?

By the way, the legal profession in Malaysia has already allowed for advertising. The only difference is that no photographs of the lawyers are allowed. Check it out - there are already legal practice websites in Malaysia and Singapore.

Nonetheless, there will be a possibility that the poor Malaysians will lose out as they could be put aside while rich "tourists" jump queue at the private hosiptals.

However, before anyone cries foul, please check out the situation over in Singapore/Thailand/HongKong and see if it is a good thing.