Extension of Medisave and MediShield schemes to home palliative care and home nursing services

16 January 2012

Question No. 97

Name of person: Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan

Question

To ask the Minister for Health if the Medisave and MediShield schemes can be extended to home palliative care and home nursing services.

Answer

1. The Government provides subsidies of up to 75% for lower and middle income patients who require home palliative and home nursing services. Patients can also use cash payouts from ElderShield to further defray the cost of such services. For home palliative care, we have allowed use of Medisave funds since 2010.

MediShield is designed as a basic insurance scheme for catastrophic hospitalisation expenses to keep premium affordable. It is therefore not able to cover home-based services.

2. We are also extending Medifund to such home-based services from April 2012, to ensure needy patients can get additional financial assistance beyond the subsidy that they are receiving. The voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs) that provide home-based services also provides additional financial help for their patients if necessary.

We will continue to review government subsidies and the use of ElderShield and Medisave to ensure affordability of such home-based services for the elderly, while balancing against the adequacy of Medisave and the impact on ElderShield premiums.