Retention of Foreign Allied Health Professionals

Ms Chia Yong Yong asked the Minister for Health what strategies and inter-Ministry coordinated efforts are made to retain the foreign allied health professionals serving in the social service sector and the intermediate and long-term care sector pending the development of a sufficient pool of Singaporean allied health professionals so as to maintain service continuity on the ground and, in the long run, improve service delivery.

Allied health professionals (AHPs), like physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists, play an important role in our healthcare sector by providing therapy treatment to patients to facilitate their recovery and improve their quality of life. As of 2 June 2014, 607 physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists in the intermediate and long-term care (ILTC) and social service sectors were registered with the Allied Health Professions Council. With registration, we will be able to raise the recognition and enhance the attractiveness of the profession.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) have implemented several strategies to support service providers in retaining AHP manpower, both local and foreign. These include additional funding to the providers to keep wages competitive with the market and provision of subsidised training programmes to help new AHPs adapt to the work environment and deepen their expertise.

MSF, MOH, the National Council of Social Services and the Agency for Integrated Care have also supported therapy hubs which provide therapy services to social and ILTC institutions to help them better meet service needs. With greater economies of scale, these hubs can also facilitate better career development opportunities for the therapists, leading to better attraction and retention of the AHPs. MOH also introduced a central employment scheme called CREATE, or Career Resourcing and Development of Allied Health Talents, in 2012 to recruit and deploy AHPs to ILTC institutions to meet their manpower needs. Thirty-three physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists have come on board the scheme so far. MOH has also stepped up our efforts to raise public awareness of allied health professions as careers of choice, through our multi-year branding campaign – "Care to Go Beyond".

We have also expanded the local training pipelines to meet the increasing demand for AHPs. The total physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy intakes at Nanyang Polytechnic and the National University of Singapore have increased by 75%, from 124 in 2007 to 218 in 2013. We will continue to review the manpower demand and supply regularly

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and build up the local training pipelines.

MOH and MSF will continue to work together with social and ILTC service providers to explore ways to enhance manpower attraction and retention to support the growth of healthcare and community care services.