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New hospital in Tengah by early 2030s; public hospitals to add 4,000 beds over next 6 years: Ong Ye Kung

SINGAPORE — A new integrated general and community hospital will be built in Tengah Town by the early 2030s, as part of plans to address Singapore's hospital capacity crunch, Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung said. 

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  • A new integrated general and community hospital will be built in Tengah by the early 2030s
  • The new hospital will help to serve the growing population in Singapore's western region
  • About 4,000 public hospital beds will also be added from now to 2030 across various medical facilities
  • Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung said that more will be done to better anchor care outside acute hospitals
  • For this, there will be increased funding for community hospitals and encouraging people to use telehealth services, for instance

SINGAPORE — A new integrated general and community hospital will be built in Tengah Town by the early 2030s, as part of plans to address Singapore's hospital capacity crunch, Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung said. 

Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday (March 6) during a debate on his ministry's budget, Mr Ong added that the Ministry of Health (MOH) will also be increasing public hospital capacity by about 4,000 beds from now to 2030 to meet the needs of the population. 

In a separate factsheet shared with the media, MOH said that it had started planning for the new hospital in Tengah to serve the growing population in the western region of the island.

The new Tengah hospital will "best complement current hospitals in the west", Mr Ong said. These include Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and Jurong Community Hospital.

On why Tengah was chosen as the location, he added: "We have just completed one in the north, Woodlands Health, are building another in the east, and expanding SGH (Singapore General Hospital) in the central region. So, the next new public hospital should be in the west." 

The hospital will be operated by the National University Health System (NUHS). 

NUHS is one of three clusters of public healthcare institutions here — apart from the National Healthcare Group and Singapore Health Services (SingHealth) — that runs several polyclinics, national specialty centres and hospitals such as National University Hospital and Ng Teng Fong General Hospital.

With the addition of Tengah and the new Eastern General Hospital Campus — announced in Parliament in 2020 — Singapore will have a total of 13 public acute hospitals and 12 community hospitals in the early 2030s, MOH said.

MORE PUBLIC HOSPITAL BEDS

There are now more than 11,000 public hospital beds in Singapore and MOH plans to increase these by about 4,000 beds from now to 2030.

"We should see new capacity coming on stream every year from now to 2030," Mr Ong said.

This is more than double the target of 1,900 more public hospital beds over the next five years that he had mentioned during last year's Budget debate. 

The need to increase public hospital beds was raised in Parliament in January this year and in a written response, Mr Ong said then that Singapore continues to see a capacity crunch in hospitals due to a rising number of elderly patients with more complex conditions, who often require much longer stays.

"To tackle the challenge more fundamentally, we need to expand capacity and catch up for the time lost due to Covid-19," he said on Wednesday. 

For a start, Woodlands Health will commission up to 700 beds in 2024 and 2025.

Slated to open this year, the SGH Emergency Medicine Building will have about 150 beds and the SGH Elective Care Centre is set to open in 2027 with 300 beds.

In 2026, Sengkang General Hospital and Outram Community Hospital will also progressively increase their capacity by about 350 beds, with some non-clinical spaces being converted into hospital wards.

Two other hospitals, Alexandra Hospital and the Eastern General Hospital Campus at Bedok North, will progressively open their new areas between 2028 and 2030.

ANCHORING CARE OUTSIDE HOSPITALS

Although plans are underway to expand capacity, Mr Ong said that Singapore should not be trapped in the mindset of "building hospitals", because there is potential to better anchor care outside acute hospitals and within the community. 

This will be done in three ways.

1. More funding for community hospitals 

From the last quarter of this year, most community hospital patients will see smaller bills after the subsidy framework for such hospitals is aligned to that of acute hospitals.

This means that community hospital patients will receive the same subsidy rate of 50 per cent to 80 per cent. 

More diagnostic services such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, as well as relevant drugs, will be subsidised at community hospitals.

Right now, there are no subsidies for these services and certain costlier drugs. 

"Unfortunately, this means operational delays in transferring patients to community hospitals,"Mr Ong said. "There are patients who are medically ready to be transferred but are just waiting for a follow-up diagnostic scan. They should be transferred without delay, and do the scan at the community hospital. 

"Others worry that after the transfer, they would no longer enjoy subsidies should they unexpectedly need a scan. Hence, they insist on staying in the acute hospital — 'just in case'."

This move will thus aim to reduce such "friction", he added.

2. MIC@Home to be a regular service

From April 1, the Mobile Inpatient Care@Home (MIC@Home) service will become "mainstream" and be offered as part of public hospitals’ regular services.

"Patients can be assured that they will not pay any more for this service than they do in a public hospital as all our hospitals intend to price MIC@Home similar to or lower than a normal ward," Mr Ong said. 

They will also be supported by subsidies as well as insurance and savings schemes such as the Integrated Shield Plan, and the Central Provident Fund's MediShield Life and MediSave, if applicable.

The programme was first launched in April 2022 as a pilot to offer patients an option to recover from their illness at home instead of a hospital ward, and potentially free up public hospital beds.

Currently, MIC@Home offers eligible patients with conditions such as skin infections, urinary tract infections, and congestive heart failure with fluid overload, the option to be cared for in the comfort of their own home instead of a hospital ward.

The care that patients receive at home, and their outcomes, are comparable to that in hospitals, MOH said on Wednesday.

As of end-2023, more than 2,000 patients have used this service, which translates to about 9,000 hospital bed days saved. 

MOH said that it aims to provide up to 300 MIC@Home virtual beds this year to further augment bed capacity in public hospitals. 

3. Encouraging use of telehealth services

By the second half of this year, MediSave coverage will be expanded to teleconsultations for preventive care services such as follow-up reviews after regular health screening.

Mr Ong said that roughly 10 per cent of polyclinic patients are expected to benefit from this, along with another 40 per cent who go to polyclinics for care of chronic ailments. 

"With this change, telehealth is treated almost the same way as physical consultations in terms of financial support," he added. 

However, he stressed that patients cannot use their MediSave for teleconsultations of common illnesses such as sore throat, cough and fever. 

"We are holding this back, at least for polyclinics, as many people have been using such teleconsults as an easy way to get medical certificates (MCs). So there will need to be greater discipline in issuing MCs before considering a final move." 

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Tengah hospital Ong Ye Kung MOH

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