Singapore will construct a new integrated general and community hospital in Tengah Town by the early 2030s to address rising healthcare demand, especially in the rapidly growing western region. Health Minister Ong Ye Kung announced the plan in Parliament on March 6, 2024, as part of broader efforts to tackle the country’s hospital capacity crunch and ensure that infrastructure keeps pace with population growth. The new hospital will complement existing facilities in the west, such as Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and Jurong Community Hospital, and will be operated by the National University Health System.
Alongside the Tengah hospital, the Ministry of Health (MOH) will increase public hospital capacity by about 4,000 beds from now to 2030, more than doubling last year’s target. This expansion will see new capacity coming online every year, with immediate additions including up to 700 beds at Woodlands Health Campus in 2024 and 2025, 150 beds at the new SGH Emergency Medicine Building, and 300 beds at the SGH Elective Care Centre by 2027. Other hospitals, such as Sengkang General Hospital, Outram Community Hospital, Alexandra Hospital, and the Eastern General Hospital Campus at Bedok North, will also progressively add beds or new facilities by 2030.
With these developments, Singapore will have a total of 13 public acute hospitals and 12 community hospitals in the early 2030s. The government is also consulting on a new not-for-profit private hospital to further expand healthcare options for Singaporeans.
In addition to physical expansion, MOH is making the Mobile Inpatient Care @ Home (MIC@Home) service a mainstream offering from April 1, 2024. This program allows eligible patients to receive hospital-level care in their own homes, monitored remotely by care teams, helping to free up hospital beds and improve patient outcomes. As of end-2023, over 2,000 patients have benefited from MIC@Home, saving about 9,000 hospital bed days. MOH aims to provide up to 300 virtual “beds” through this service in 2024, further relieving pressure on hospital infrastructure.
(Source: Malay Mail)
