17 Feb 2012
By: SALMA KHALIK
THE shortage of beds in public hospitals continues to be a problem. Changi General Hospital (CGH), for instance, has had to postpone some of its scheduled surgical operations at the end of last month and early this month as all its beds were taken.
Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) is once again putting patients in beds in corridors, where they usually spend a night before moving to a ward.
On Feb 2, half the inpatients at its emergency department had to wait more than six hours to get a bed. On three other days that week, half had to wait more than four hours, according to figures released by the Ministry of Health (MOH). The median wait at public hospitals ranges from one to three hours.
The bed crunch in public sector hospitals – triggered by a rise in the number of inpatients plus longer stays because they are getting older – will ease only in 2014, when the 700-bed Ng Teng Fong Hospital opens in Jurong. And MOH recently announced that it is bringing forward the opening of Sengkang Hospital by two years to 2018.
For now, public hospitals are doing what they can to hold the fort.
CGH, which has the busiest emergency department here with about 500 patients a day, houses some patients at the next-door St Andrew’s Community Hospital. It has also started sending patients recovering from hip fractures to a rehabilitation ward at Peacehaven Nursing Home, where they can spend a few weeks before going home.
CGH chief executive T.K. Udairam said it has “postponed some elective surgical operations and activated all temporary beds”. It can generally find beds for half its patients within two hours.
TTSH is also putting up several hundred patients in wards it runs at Ren Ci Community Hospital next door; at the Ang Mo Kio-Thye Hua Kwan Hospital which is about 10 to 15 minutes away by car; and at the nearby Communicable Disease Centre.
Singapore General Hospital (SGH), the largest public hospital with almost 1,600 beds, has leased two Alexandra Hospital wards since August 2010.
The National University Hospital beds some 30 patients recovering from orthopaedic surgery at the private West Point Hospital, 10 minutes away.
The 550-bed Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH), which opened less than two years ago, is already logging about 85 per cent occupancy and occasionally sends patients to Alexandra Hospital.
The latter, originally meant to close with the opening of KTPH, is now run by a team being built up for Singapore’s next public hospital in Jurong. The team manages some 270 beds, excluding the two wards leased to SGH.
Said Alexandra Hospital chief operating officer Joanne Yap: “In the past three months, Alexandra Hospital accepted about 200 patients on average per month from the other restructured hospitals.”
The last two years have seen a 3 to 4 per cent increase in inpatient numbers at public hospitals – up from about 1 per cent a year for the prior two years.
Inpatients’ median age has also climbed. The figure at CGH climbed from 56 years in 2008 to 60 last year. This has resulted in the average length of stay going up from 5.3 days in 2008 to 6.2 last year.
An MOH spokesman said 60 is about the median age of adult patients at all public hospitals. She added that patients 65 and older typically spend seven to eight days in hospital each time, compared with four to five days for those aged 15 to 64.
In the past decade, the proportion of patients aged 65 and older has gone up from 25 per cent of all patients to 31 per cent last year.
With Singapore’s rapidly ageing population, this trend is expected to continue. The number of people 65 years and older is projected to triple from 300,000 in 2010 to 900,000 by 2030.
Email: salma@sph.com.sg
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