新加坡卫生部长王乙康国会答复议员：到2030年，公立医院床位将达1.5万张

I know it is very uncomfortable, very unsettling for a patient who is quite unwell to have to wait many hours for a bed. But please be assured that hospitals will triage patients quickly upon arrival and start treatment for urgent cases, even if the patient is waiting for a bed.

Mr Ang Wei Neng raised the issue of Changi General Hospital which was also reported in a Straits Times article. Changi is an old structure. It only has four ambulance bays. [Please refer to "Clarification by Minister for Health", Official Report, 6 March 2024, Vol 95, Issue 131, Correction By Written Statement section.] So, the queue will build up quite fast.

But actually, that is not the limiting factor. We can always triage in the ambulances. It is a small problem. What we need to watch out for are Intensive Care Unit (ICU) occupancy, resuscitation occupancy. If those are full, we divert the ambulances. Ambulance bays are full, we can handle. On the surface, it looks bad; but actually, operationally, it is not a huge problem to overcome.

Assoc Prof Jamus Lim suggested using more Urgent Care Centres (UCCs). UCCs have been useful and effective. We have also been using the General Practitioner First (GPFirst) scheme, especially around Changi area, and that is also useful, and we will continue to deploy all possible methods to alleviate patient loads at the EDs.

To tackle the challenge more fundamentally, we need to expand capacity and catch up with the time lost, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We opened about 640 new acute and community hospital beds since June last year. They make up the over 11,000 public hospital beds that we have today. That is the stock we have – 11,000. We intend to add another 4,000 beds by 2030. And we should see new capacity coming on stream every year, from now to 2030.

Starting this year, and next, in 2024 and 2025, Woodlands Health will commission up to 700 beds. In 2026, Sengkang General Hospital and Outram Community Hospital are expected to expand by about 350 beds by converting non-clinical areas into hospital wards. Then in 2027, the Elective Care Centre at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) is expected to open; that has 300 beds. In 2028 and 2029, the redeveloped Alexandra Hospital is expected to open progressively. Then in 2029 and 2030, the new Eastern General Hospital Campus is expected to open progressively. Then we move into the early 2030s, that is when we hope to see the completion of a new regional public hospital that we have started work on.

We have just completed one in the North, Woodlands Health. We are building another one in the East. We are expanding SGH in the central region. So, the next new public hospital should be in the West. We are planning to site it in Tengah Town, which is an emerging population centre. It will best complement current hospitals in the West. The new hospital in Tengah will be run by the National University Health System cluster. Mr Ang Wei Neng is nodding his head.

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