New public hospital to be built at Tengah, home-based care to meet the needs of Singapore's ageing society - Singapore News

Source: The Independent
Author: Anna Maria Romero

SINGAPORE: A new hospital will be built in the western part of Singapore, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung announced in Parliament on Wednesday morning (March 6).

The new integrated general and community hospital, aimed to meet the needs of Singapore's ageing society, will be located in Tengah Town and is set to open at the beginning of the 2030s.

The facility is part of the announcements from the Ministry of Health (MOH) at the ongoing Committee of Supply debates, which Mr Ong summarized in a one-minute video below.

MOH also plans to upgrade home-based care for seniors and expand the "virtual" ward model.

"We have just completed one in the north, Woodlands Health, and 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," added Mr Ong.

Under the auspices of the National University Health System, the new hospital at Tengah will bring Singapore's public acute hospitals to 13 and community hospitals to 12 by the next decade, which is in keeping with MOH's plan of adding 4,000 beds by then. At present, Singapore has 11,000 public hospital beds.

From today until 2030, the public can expect the number of hospital beds to increase yearly.

After questions were raised in January concerning the need for more public hospital beds, Mr Ong said that due to more older patients with complex conditions needing to stay in hospitals longer, Singapore still experiences a capacity crunch in hospitals.

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

The Health Minister announced that in 2024 and 2025, the Woodlands Health Campus will commission up to 700 beds.

Additionally, the SGH Emergency Medicine Building, which is scheduled for opening this year, will have around 150 beds, and the SGH Elective Care Centre, set to open in 2027, will convert some non-clinical spaces into hospital wards in 2026, which will bring up capacity by 350 beds.

Mr Ong, however, cautioned against merely getting "trapped in the mindset of 'building hospitals' when thinking about capacity. There is potential to better anchor care outside of hospitals and in the community."

He said that not every patient will need high acuity care and constant monitoring in a hospital while undergoing treatment.

Many will need convalescent care and rehabilitation, with additional medical help "readily available nearby," said the Health Minister, adding that more funding will be available for community hospitals. /TISG