Public
hospitals will not hit targets in terms of facilities and manpower when
hospital admissions are projected to skyrocket to 791,000 patients per annum
from the year 2030. An OCBC report which made this prediction said that in the
past 5 years, public hospitals have only added an average of 188 beds per year.
The
report further added that “public hospitals need an additional c.6,000 beds by
2030, which is approximately 440 beds per year,” and that, current private
hospitals have the capacity to add 500 beds with existing licensed beds
capacity, which is approximately half of the c.1,000 beds required by 2030.
“Based on
the Healthcare 2020 Masterplan, the addition of 1,900 beds coming mainly from
the newly completed Ng Teng Fong Hospital (~700 beds yet to be included in the
current operational number of beds) and Sengkang General Hospital (1,000 beds
to be completed by 2018) represents only a quarter of the total number of beds
required by 2030,” OCBC said.
OCBC
noted that the government has four acute hospitals in the pipeline subject to
review in 2020.
“While it
may be easier to add ‘brick and mortar’ i.e. medical facilities, it is more
challenging to build manpower in the near-to-medium term especially specialised
doctors. The number of new physicians needed by 2030 is around 6000 physicians,
or 371 physicians per year,” the report said.
“From
historical trends, Singapore has been able to add an average of 677 physicians
per year, double the number required per year. The increase is typically drawn
from around 300 doctors who are Singapore residents, and 300 to 350
non-resident doctors, of which, c.200 are graduates from Singapore’s medical
institutions,” the report added.
In a
White Paper released in 2013, the Government said that it intends to increase
the population of Singapore to 6.9 million by the year 2030.
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