2018 Hobbit Movie Awards

It has been quite a few years since this Hobbit published the Movie Awards. It is once again the awards season and therefore the time to give out these distinguished awards again to worthy individuals, initiatives and figments of our imagination for stuff that captured our attention this the last year.

Best Honest Performance Award for a New Comer

This award goes to Senior Minister of State Chee Hong Tat for his great speech on 30 Sep 17 at the SMC Physician’s Pledge Ceremony. He basically said that JCI and Residency need serious relooks. In particular the Residency was implemented in a suboptimal way. His honest and sincere performance giving this speech moved this hobbit to tears and made his feet hair stand.

There were no other nominees for this award. Honesty, unlike residents and associate consultants, is a rare commodity.

Best Solo Performance

This goes to Solo the Movie featuring the Solo GP. He gets this award for working alone to get things done in the upcoming Solo the movie. His job is getting tougher too, given the additional demands that have either come or are coming his way. This include supplying information to the NEHR and meeting the demands of the new medico-legal climate. Of course he still doesn’t realise that once the law is passed, the Solo GP as the licensee of the clinic can be fined up to $50,000 and jailed for up to 12 months if he doesn’t contribute the required information to the NEHR. And you thought being suspended or struck off by the SMC was a big deal. That’s chicken shit compared to this.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Minister Gan Kim Yong gets this award. He has gotten most things right in his 7-year term as Health Minister – rolling back excesses of the previous era such as residency and putting back good stuff such as benchmarks/guidelines of fees. Setting in place new initiatives that benefit patients and doctors such as CHAS, PGP etc. His last big test is the NEHR. It’s like Luke Skywalker meeting the Dark Side in the swamps of Dagobah….will he survive the Big Test?

Best Sequel Remake Award

We have seen this before, like the tired Transformer franchise. Getting bigger but hopefully not worse. First there were 2 clusters then 6. Now 3. 3 makes sense, but it’s still bewildering for the folks in KTPH who were once in NHG, then out, then back in NHG again. Likewise for CGH and Singhealth. Hopefully this clustering and reclustering process has come to an end finally. More confusing than the ending of Inception.

Best Make-up and Costume Design Award

Outlawing the SMA Guidelines of Fees (GOF) has proven to be a bad idea after ten long and painful years. So GOF has to be brought back in some back without losing face for the bigwigs and powers that be. And so, the MOH Fees Benchmarks Advisory Committee was born. The aim is to essentially produce the same outcomes that the SMA GOF did for 20 years from 1987 to 2007, but to save face, it has been repackaged. This is great make-up and costume design for essentially the same face and body. This award without a doubt goes to MOH Fees Benchmarks Advisory Committee

Best Science Fiction/Suspense Thriller Movie Award

The Modified Montgomery Test (MM Test) wins in two categories. First, the MM test tries to impose a certain pattern of thinking which 99% of doctors will find alien. (By alien, this hobbit means the aliens in the Alien movie franchise – it will eat up our brains). It’s also a great thriller movie as many bewildered patients will find that their doctors no longer make any decisions or even recommendations and they themselves now have to make decisions based on the mass of ‘relevant information’ given. What great suspense as everyone awaits the patient to digest the information and make the best decision for himself.

After a wait of 10 years, some say the MM Test is a worthy sequel to the 2007 Jack Neo box office hit, Just Follow Law.

Best Movie Soundtrack and Score

National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) wins this hands-down. So far, the NEHR soundtrack only offers all the positive-feeling homilies like “connecting healthcare professionals for patient-centred care” and “achieves better health outcomes” and “raises patient safety”. The soundtrack and score is completely silent on “privacy rights of patients”, “increased medico-legal liabilities for healthcare professionals” and “what are the liabilities and responsibilities of the NEHR”. The silence of the official NEHR soundtrack and score is masterly deafening. A maestro is obviously at work here.

Best Supporting Actress Award

This award goes to the senior paediatrician who was suspended for misdiagnosing Kawasaki Disease. She was originally slated to get the Best Actress Award until some 1000 doctors signed a petition to MOH stating the punishment was too harsh.

Box Office Bomb Award

The biggest bomb of the season goes deservedly to the ACGME-I Residency Programme which is due for a major overhaul/reconstruction/remaking/dismantling (depending on how you look at it). The number of newly minted specialists with no  long-term  employment contracts continues to rise and some are already flooding the private sector market. These poor fellas look like the extras who are milling around the film studios looking for bit roles and part-time work. The big difference is that extras cost nothing to train but these specialists each cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to train.

Best Box Office Hit

This one is walking straight to the finishing line with big bucks. Third Party Administrators (TPAs) are making the big bucks with their arrangements with insurance companies and big corporates while being entirely funded by collections from participating doctors. Latest heard – TPAs want to claw back on money already paid to doctors because some of their clients claim to be losing money. Can doctors claw back from TPAs if they are found to be losing money from TPA contracts?

 Best Studio Award

 This goes to MOH for their acquisition of the functions, departments of another ministry (MSF – Ministry of Social and Family Development). MOH is now a mega-studio set to become even larger as it absorbs the social aged care functions of MSF. It’s like Disney buying up the Marvel and Star Wars franchise. Questions abound: – will MOH end up with severe indigestion after this exercise? Will Han Solo and Luke Skywalker be killed off in the exercise?

Best Actor Award

There were a few characters vying for the very prestigious Best Actor Award this year. But there was really no contest. The thespian performance by the private hospital orthopedic surgeon who apparently accidentally severed the popliteal artery and vein and the peroneal nerve during a Total Knee Reconstruction (TKR) and then flew off on a holiday leaving the resident medical officer to manage the patient was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience because the patient died a few days later due to complications of the TKR and subsequent limb salvage surgeries.

Best Director Award

As usual, this was a contentious item on the Movie Awards List. This year the award goes to the haematologist who was appointed to be the director of a tertiary-level cancer centre. That’s like appointing an ENT to run the eye or dental centre or a psychiatrist to head the neuroscience centre. Not say cannot do, the disciplines are indeed a bit related, but still it looks a bit strange, lor…..no matter how you look at it…….

Best Film Award

This year goes to a surprise winner, the Finance Minister, for announcing the GST hike of 2% that will be implemented soonest 2021. This will undoubtedly spur “optional” healthcare consumption in 2019 and 2020 like aesthetic procedures to avoid the impending GST hike. This hobbit predicts that folks will rush to have their liposuctions, boob and butt jobs etc over the next two years. Huat ah!