Ramping up Healthcare Personnel Numbers

The following question stood in the name of Assoc Prof Fatimah Lateef –

To ask the Minister for Health in view of new healthcare institutions and step-down and intermediate care facilities opening up, what steps, strategies and interventions does the Ministry have to quickly and continuously ramp up the number of healthcare personnel to meet the increasing needs.

To meet the growing demand for healthcare services, we are increasing healthcare capacity as part of our Healthcare 2020 Masterplan. To support these plans, we are enhancing healthcare manpower development in three areas.

First, we are attracting more young Singaporeans to join healthcare. To achieve this, we are expanding our local training pipelines so that more students can train to be healthcare professionals. For instance, our local medical intake will increase gradually to 500, with the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine admitting its first cohort this year.

At the same time, we are raising the profile of nursing and allied health professions as careers of choice through our newly launched "Care to Go Beyond" national branding campaign. We will also continue to market our scholarships to attract more talent. This year, we awarded 251 healthcare scholarships, 46% more than last year. We also adjust the salaries of public healthcare professionals from time to time to ensure that we can continue to attract and retain talent in the public healthcare and intermediate-long term care (ILTC) institutions.

Second, we are supporting mid-career professionals who are interested in joining the healthcare sector. We fund the cost of their nursing or allied health training, and provide them with training allowances during their studies to defray their living expenses.

At the same time, we are supporting older healthcare staff who are keen to continue working, for as long as they can. In 2012, 95% of public sector healthcare professionals in public healthcare institutions who reached the age

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were re-employed. We have also implemented back-to-practice schemes to support the return of trained healthcare professionals who have left clinical practice for various reasons. This year, we facilitated the return of 27 such nurses.

Third, we are recruiting from abroad to augment our workforce. While we will do what we can to grow the local manpower pool, it is unlikely to be sufficient to meet Singapore's growing healthcare needs. Based on our projections, we will need to grow our national healthcare professional workforce by 50%, or about 20,000 more, between 2011 and 2020. This is not a small number. We need to supplement our local workforce with overseas-trained healthcare professionals. In particular, we aim to bring back more Singaporeans studying medicine and dentistry overseas, through the offering of pre-employment grants. We have attracted about 250 of them back since 2010. We will also continue to recruit qualified foreign professionals and help them assimilate into our local working environment.

Besides growing the healthcare manpower workforce, we are actively supporting innovation and productivity initiatives in the public healthcare and ILTC institutions through our funding schemes, to moderate the demand for manpower in healthcare.

The healthcare workforce is a critical part of our healthcare system. MOH will continue to ensure that we have sufficient qualified manpower to meet Singapore's healthcare needs.

I would like to thank the Senior Minister of State for the reply. In addition to hiring more or producing more healthcare professionals, I think the right siting of healthcare givers is also important. I would like to ask the Senior Minister of State what will MOH be doing to encourage healthcare professionals to specialise in areas such as geriatric medicine and other relevant specialties to meet the increasing demand with the ageing population.

A very good question. Indeed, we need to not just increase the absolute number of healthcare staff in the different sectors but also to look at how to channel or incentivise or encourage nurses, doctors to go into areas of specialties where there will be increasing demand. So, we are looking at different ways. Of course, it will be in terms of, say, the number of training places in different specialties. We will have to work out that with the professionals and with the healthcare institutions. We are also looking at how we can incentivise or encourage the professions to go into the different

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specialties, say, through salary and career pathways, and of course, upgrading opportunities.

I take the Member's concerns and let me assure the Member that MOH, together with the public healthcare institutions, are well aware that we need to ensure that the welfare of the healthcare professionals and staff are taken care of in view of the increasing demand for healthcare services.