Affordability & Cost

When speaking of the term “Public Hospital” and according to Wikipedia it denotatively brings the meaning of a public or government hospital, which is owned by the government and receives government funding. Hence provides medical care free of charge for the public. Now, when looking at it in connotative sense public hospitals almost always instills a general image that is similar to most people’s minds. It is culturally known that public hospitals are on the cheaper side. This is a positive connotation to public hospitals. But at the same time, it is also culturally known that public hospitals although cheaper, delivers substandard and often poor service comparing to that of private hospitals. This is the negative connotation when it comes to public hospitals.

We wanted to compare the basic connotation that comes with public hospitals and in this case affordability wise. So we took it into context with our subject, which is Putrajaya Hospital. To briefly explain the subject, Putrajaya Hospital is first and foremost a public government hospital claiming to provide first class service. Moving along to their affordability and cost, as stated on their official website the rates for government servants are basically similar to that of any other government based hospital whereas the rates for the general public is fixed according to types of rooms, beds, length of stay and treatments required and so forth. Simply put, they claimed that it is usually affordable for the normal working class citizen as most of the rates and charges for one day are below RM100 for warded patients. Furthermore, it is free of charge for outpatients with RM1 fee paid only once during the patient’s first ever visit to the hospital.

To evaluate if their claims were true to their website, we visited the hospital and carried out interviews with various patients that were divided into outpatients and those who were warded. Upon interviewing, we discovered that there were clearly both positive and negative connotations towards Putrajaya Hospital’s cost being expressed. Firstly, a middle-aged woman expressed that she was initially briefed of the total costs that she would have to bear for her treatments and also shared room charges. The hospital staff clearly quoted a price in the beginning, however going further into the treatment she was told that the charges would have to be increased and finally, her total cost matched if not more than that of a private hospital. She stated that if she knew that would’ve been the case, she would have gotten treatment at a private hospital since she felt as if the service was not even up to standards. Her crunched up facial expressions and grim tone of voice signified that she was very frustrated. Secondly, a fatigued looking middle-aged man while waiting for his young child’s medicine at the outpatient pharmacy expressed that even though the waiting time is absurd he is pleased that by paying only RM1 his child receives ample medicine to treat his fever.

My opinion on this particular matter is that Putrajaya Hospital has failed to steer clear of the general connotations that have been culturally linked to public hospitals when narrowed down to affordability and the service that comes with it. Their claims on their website were not always translated on point and therefore negative connotations emerged. Although this was the case, the major positive connotation of Putrajaya Hospital, mainly the understanding among the general public of the cheap costs clearly is a stronger effect because it still attracts them to choose to go to Putrajaya Hospital despite knowing that the service would be poor.