30 Aug 2011
By: SALMA KHALIK
THE public hospitals here are so full that some are borrowing ward space from other institutions to house patients.
The crunch has led Health Minister Gan Kim Yong to float the idea of bringing forward the opening of Sengkang Hospital, scheduled for 2020.
But he told The Straits Times yesterday that simply adding more beds to the system alone will not be a viable solution in the long run.
It does not take into account how patients prefer to be cared for in the community instead of in hospitals, Singapore's limited land space, and how with an ageing population, beds will simply not be enough no matter how many hospitals are built.
More innovative ways to manage the health-care system must be found, he said, adding that he was reviewing the health-care masterplan.
One solution is to use general practitioners and polyclinics more intensively to keep people healthy – and out of hospitals. Another is to develop home care services, he said.
Having "satellite wards" was one way to ease the current bed crunch, which is in fact what is happening now.
When the 550-bed Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) opened a year ago, industry watchers had heaved a sigh of relief, expecting the bed crunch to end.
The relief was short-lived. KTPH is itself facing a high occupancy rate of about 80 per cent.
Other public hospitals here are running at almost full capacity, with at least three having taken to borrowing ward space from other organisations to house some of their patients.
Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) is currently housing 273 patients, looked after by its doctors and nurses, in three places outside its main hospital complex.
It has 123 patients in four subsidised B2 and C-class wards in space rented from Ren Ci Community Hospital next door.
It has another 93 beds in Ang Mo Kio-Thye Hua Kwan Hospital, about 10 to 15 minutes away by car, where recovering patients in B1, B2 and C classes who need intense rehabilitation are housed.
It also has a "buffer" of 57 beds at the nearby Communicable Disease Centre for patients awaiting a place in a nursing home or community hospital.
These extra beds bring TTSH's total beds to about 1,500. The hospital operates at high occupancy levels most of the time, said its spokesman.
The National University Hospital (NUH), meanwhile, has set up a ward for 30 patients in the private West Point Hospital in Jurong, a 10- to 15-minute drive away.
With these beds, the hospital now has 1,027 beds.
Its spokesman said the hospital has been able to squeeze in 100 more beds in the last two years, including the 30 in West Point, but this is as many as the hospital can have.
Changi General Hospital (CGH) runs a ward of 33 beds in St Andrew's Community Hospital next door. The hospital is renovating and reconfiguring its wards, after which it can have just a dozen more beds by early next year, bringing its bed tally to 800.
The number of patients hospitalised in the six public general hospitals has gone up significantly in the last two years. Last year, they had to cope with 10,000 more patients – 3.8 per cent more – than the previous year.
In the first quarter of this year, the increase compared with the same period the previous year was even higher – 7.5 per cent.
Dr Lam Pin Min, chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for Health, blames the higher demand for beds on the "sharp increase in the population over the past four to five years and the rapidly ageing population".
The bed crunch, he said, comes from not having any "redundancy" in supply to cater to the surge in demand.
He urged the ministry to "look at its planning norm and philosophy" so that there is "reasonable redundancy" in the system to address both anticipated and unexpected demand surges in the future.
With occupancy rates hitting – and occasionally surpassing 90 per cent – the bed crunch is now critical.
As an indication of how serious the problem is, the number of "free" beds includes those in intensive care wards – where some beds are always kept on standby for emergencies, isolation wards for patients with highly infectious diseases, and special wards such as those for babies, the mentally ill and prisoners.
Alexandra Hospital is the only public hospital with spare capacity; but even so, its occupancy stands at 60 per cent to 70 per cent. Its chief operating officer Joanne Yap said the hospital is doing its bit by taking in about 150 patients from the other hospitals every month. Its occupancy has thus gone up by about 10 percentage points from the first three months of the year.
One piece of good news is that work is under way on the construction of the 700-bed Ng Teng Fong General Hospital in Jurong. But the hospital will be ready only in three years' time.
Email: salma@sph.com.sg
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