MOH To Fully Fund The Construction Of 3 New Nursing Homes

11 Jun 2009

By 2011, three existing nursing homes will move into new, larger and better equipped premises in the heartlands to serve their patients better.  The new locations will also make it more convenient for the families to visit the patients.

Bright Hill Evergreen Home will move to Punggol, Singapore Christian Home  to Sembawang and Villa Francis Home to Yishun. The exact locations of the sites are still being finalized and will be announced in due course. 

Unlike previous arrangement whereby the VWOs have to fund part of the capital cost, the Ministry of Health (MOH) will provide full capital funding.  This will ease the financial burden on the VWOs and allow them to concentrate on caring for their patients who will continue to be heavily subsidized by MOH based on existing means-testing framework. 

Each nursing home will house up to 250 beds and will cost MOH about $25 million to build and fit out.  The 3 existing homes are small, with a total bed capacity of 322 beds.  The rebuilding programme will more than double their capacity, and add an additional 400 beds to our nursing home capacity of 9,200 beds.  This will keep our supply in pace with expected rise in demand as our population ages further.

The MOH signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the three VWOs today to collaborate on the relocation, construction and running of the nursing homes. This includes design specifications and construction schedule. These homes will remain independently managed and operated by the VWOs. The MOU however enables MOH and its partner VWOs to jointly achieve the desired outcome of raising quality and keeping care affordable for the patients.

MOH is commited to ramp up total nursing homes capacity to 14,000 beds by 2020. The collaboration is integral to MOH’s plan to comprehensively upgrade the nursing home sector in terms of manpower planning, training, professional development as well as optimising operations through shared services and subscribing to good standards of care.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH

10 June 2009