Overcrowding in Restructured Hospitals

Assoc Prof Fatimah Lateef asked the Minister for Health whilst awaiting new healthcare institutions to be ready and functional, how is overcrowding and high bed occupancy rates handled in the restructured hospitals.

Our public hospitals adopt a multi-pronged strategy to actively manage patient loads and bed occupancy. This includes right-siting care, active intervention to safeguard patient safety during the wait for admission, and optimising the use of resources.

To right-site care, our hospitals actively review and discharge patients who are medically stable so as to release capacity and allow new patients to be admitted. This includes working closely with the Agency for Integrated Care to transfer stable patients to step-down care settings, such as community hospitals and nursing homes. Some hospitals also work with service providers

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to provide transitional support and training for care-givers, to help discharged patients recuperate in their own homes.

For patients waiting at the emergency departments for admission, our hospitals have put in place measures to ensure the continued delivery of safe and timely care. These include deploying inpatient medical teams to initiate prompt medical assessment and definitive care at the emergency department. To optimise the use of resources, subsidised patients may be placed into private wards for a short duration if subsidised wards are full, and these patients continue to pay subsidised rates. As occupancy rates vary across hospitals, some stable patients are also transferred, with their consent, to hospitals with higher available capacity, such as Alexandra Hospital. This helps to spread the load across the system.

While we are also building new capacity in the longer-term, such as the new Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, which is scheduled for completion by end-2014, MOH is also working with existing institutions to add capacity in the short term. For example, the Changi General Hospital and St Andrew's Community Hospital's Integrated Building will add 180 acute hospital beds and 100 community hospital beds when it is completed in end-2014. Where appropriate, our hospitals deploy transition beds to accommodate patients for up to a day until transfers to beds are available. In addition, hospitals also tap on the capacity in the private sector to meet their needs. For example, Changi General Hospital rents 26 beds in Parkway East Hospital to manage their clinically stable patients.

Finally, I would like to reassure the public that my Ministry monitors the hospital bed situation closely and our hospitals work hard to deliver appropriate care in a timely manner to ensure that patient safety and care are not compromised.