SINGAPORE: The Health Ministry has said it will improve financing policies to keep healthcare affordable for all, even for those who require longer-term care for chronic conditions and ageing.
There will also be further expansion of public healthcare infrastructure and manpower in the coming five years, said the ministry on Wednesday in its addendum to the President's Address on the opening of the 12th Parliament.
The ministry said
Singaporeans will have greater access to subsidised care in the
community through new primary and rehabilitative care facilities, and
expanded portable subsidies for private healthcare services.
The
ministry added that it will strengthen the social safety net by
expanding subsidies for medication, outpatient care and intermediate and
long-term care.
The Ministerial Committee for Ageing will
significantly step up investments in more integrated health and social
care facilities to provide the elderly with the care they need.
The
Health Ministry will also focus on extending the range and coverage of
healthcare services to tackle chronic conditions and cancer, in
particular cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
Its aim is to
build up on integrated care for the chronically ill, so their treatment
will be managed on an ongoing, rather than episodic basis. To do this,
the ministry will further exploit technology to make it easier for
patients to move seamlessly between providers.
One of the
technologies introduced is the CLEO system (Clinic specific Electronic
Medical Record and Operations IT system) which will facilitate the
sharing of patient information among GPs.
With this system, GPs
will now find it easier to follow up on care for chronically ill
patients, such as those suffering from diabetes and high-blood pressure.
Dr
Jonathan Pang Sze Kang, a GP with Everhealth Family Clinic &
Surgery, said: "This system is supposed to be intelligent enough to give
me reminders and prompt me to do certain things at certain intervals
for each individual chronic disease. That by itself is a wonderful
development. So in case I'm too busy or my nurses forget to remind
patients or I forgot to remind patients, the system prompts me so that
our delivery will be enhanced and improved upon."
"So for
example, if a patient has diabetes, the system will prompt me every year
that I need to do tests and maybe every three to six months, I need to
do certain assessments. And if I have not done anything yet, the system
will show me that nothing has been done yet."
The system will start rolling out by the second quarter of next year and by 2013, some 50 GP clinics will be equipped with it.
With
the CLEO system, GPs will have have access to the National Electronics
Health Record (NEHR) system which will provide them with an array of
patient information. These include their current care received at other
healthcare institutions, medication histories, drug allergies,
laboratory investigations, clinical diagnoses and X-ray reports.
Dr
Patrick Chia, Director of Clinical Transformation Services at MOH
Holdings, said: "They will do things in a more organised and systematic
manner in terms of clinical tools that will be used to help them. They
will find that they can find more specific knowledge better... be able
look up references in a better way. They would be able to manage and
track patients better... Because many times in a manual world, tracking
is just not tenable."
With more GPs sharing patient information,
patient confidentiality has been a concern among some patients. But GPs
Channel NewsAsia spoke to stressed that before their information is
keyed in, it will be agreed upon by relevant parties and must be crucial
to the management of their medical condition.
Dr Jonathan said:
"Individual GPs must find out from their patients what they are
comfortable and what they are not comfortable with. The GPs should also
reassure their patients that their data and information is confidential
within the legal parameters laid down in Singapore. So if for some
reason, the patient chooses not to divulge certain information then of
course, we won't put this information in the system."
The
ministry's goal is to roll out the NEHR system to some 10 GPs, a hospice
and a nursing home by the end of this year. It will also be rolled out
to all public hospitals by June 2012.
Videos and text of President Tony Tan's speech at the opening of parliament are available here
-CNA/ac