[ad_1]
SINGAPORE – Hospitals here should be designed with flexibility in mind so that they can adapt to changing healthcare needs in the future, Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said on Friday (November 13).
Speaking to reporters during a tour of Outram Community Hospital, where he announced the opening of a new integrated hospital in Bedok North, Gan said changing demographics and disease patterns will require a changing model of care.
It is important that hospitals are able to be flexible and adapt to these new models of care when necessary, he added.
When asked if the integrated model – the joint location of an acute care hospital and a community hospital working closely together – reflects what all hospitals here will look like in the future, Mr. Gan said that model is very important. .
“We see that many of the patients when they are discharged, especially older patients, require a prolonged period of rehabilitation,” he noted.
“Instead of doing it within the hospital, which is very, very expensive, and we also need to focus the capabilities of acute hospitals on those with acute needs, this is best treated in a community hospital.”
He stressed that community hospitals play a key role in helping patients recover and that the integrated model allows patients to be transferred between the two types of hospitals more easily.
There are several other institutions throughout the island that have general and community hospitals located next to each other.
These include Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Ren Ci Hospital, Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and Jurong Community Hospital, and Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and Outram Community Hospital.
However, Mr. Gan added: “The model is evolving all the time because our health care needs are also evolving, all the time.”
Noting that the new integrated hospital will take about 10 years from its design to complete, and will probably last another 40 years or so after, he said: “By the time you are done, it cannot be based on the needs you have today.”
Many new hospitals have already been built with this flexibility in mind, he added.
For example, during the pandemic, Outram Community Hospital handed over some of its wards to SGH to be managed as acute rooms, allowing SGH to free up capacity to care for Covid-19 patients.
“That has been the key consideration. You need that flexibility to allow us to adapt to changing healthcare needs in the future,” Gan said.
[ad_2]
