Cost of Reorganising Healthcare Clusters into Three Groups

Assoc Prof Daniel Goh Pei Siong asked the Minister for Health (a) how much will the reorganisation of the healthcare clusters cost; (b) what are the considerations for reorganisation into the three clusters instead of two or more than three; (c) what additional concrete benefits of the reorganisation, such as shorter waiting times for appointments, are there for patients.

We announced in 2012 Healthcare 2020, which outlined our plan to expand capacity, improve quality and enhance the affordability of healthcare services. Even as we implement Healthcare 2020, we need to plan ahead further into the future. Last year, I announced three key shifts to prepare for our healthcare needs beyond 2020: beyond hospital to community, beyond quality to value, and beyond healthcare to health. This transformation is necessary as our healthcare needs will grow in volume and complexity due to our ageing population and increased chronic disease burden, among others. For this reason, we need to organise ourselves better so that we can implement the transformation more swiftly and decisively.

The public healthcare system will be reorganised into three integrated clusters, each having a fuller range of facilities, capabilities, services and networks across different care settings. This will enable them to deliver more comprehensive and person-centred health promotion, disease prevention, curative and rehabilitative care for the population in their respective regions.

Primary care will play an increasingly important role in our care transformation. After reorganisation, each cluster will have a group of polyclinics which, together with general practitioner partners and community partners, can anchor care more firmly in primary and community settings. Collectively, these changes will ultimately benefit Singaporeans by providing more appropriate care and bringing care closer to them.

In addition to greater economies of scale, the reorganisation will also facilitate scaling up of programmes and services by the integrated clusters, and their collaborations with the private sector and community partners, across a wider region to benefit more Singaporeans. The integrated clusters will be able to tap on a larger pool of manpower resources and talents. They will also be able to offer their employees a wider and deeper range of professional development opportunities and a broader platform for cross-learning that will benefit staff and our patients.

We do not expect to incur significant financial cost for the reorganisation. The planned infrastructure and service developments are already included in our Healthcare 2020 Master Plan and the three key shifts I highlighted, and they are separately catered for in our healthcare budget. These will need to be implemented regardless of the reorganisation.