SPEECH BY MR ONG YE KUNG, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND COORDINATING MINISTER FOR SOCIAL POLICIES, AT ST LUKE’S ELDERCARE’S 5TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION OF RESIDENTIAL-BASED SERVICES

Professor Ho Yew Kee, Chairman, St Luke’s ElderCare (SLEC)

Mr Foong Daw Ching, Vice-Chairman, SLEC

Dr Kenny Tan, CEO, SLEC

Residents and friends and elders

          I am happy to join you today to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of St Luke’s ElderCare’s (SLEC) Residential-based Services. I've not been in MOH very long, one term plus a little bit. But indeed, when I first heard about St Luke's ElderCare, it was during COVID, and it was indeed about your heroic deeds. At that time, we are facing an unknown enemy, and we just needed space to protect everybody, quarantine spaces, especially for seniors and elders. And St Luke's was there. I think it wasn't just St Luke's, but the entire healthcare sector, our clusters, nursing homes, GPs, nurses, all coming together.

2.           It felt like a long time ago. What I do remember, it was a time where the nation came together, and also, very importantly, the whole healthcare sector came together to pull us through this trauma and this pandemic. So, thank you very much. It makes this fifth anniversary even more meaningful. Thank you.

SLEC’s Growth and Contributions

3.           Indeed, SLEC has come a long way since it first started operations in 1999. You have a modest beginning serving just 200 clients, and now you support over 22,000 seniors across 18 Senior Care and Rehabilitation Centres, you have 12 Active Ageing Centres (AAC),you are still trying to get one more here, two Nursing Homes and home care services that you provide throughout the island.  By 2030, SLEC expects to serve over 45,000 residents. I know you are operating all over the country, but as I was mentioning to Professor Ho actually, as you provide more services across settings, it is also useful to focus on certain geography where your presence is strongly felt.

4.           SLEC’s first nursing home opened during the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020, right here in Ang Mo Kio. In April this year, SLEC expanded and opened a second nursing home in Punggol, and then a third in Bukit Panjang is set to commence operations next year.

5.           And beyond providing nursing home services, SLEC partners with NHG Health to conduct frailty screenings in the community and offer rehabilitation for seniors with breathlessness. At its day rehabilitation centres and AAC Care in Punggol, it has implemented robotic therapy services. These provide precise movement support and targeted stimulation and make rehabilitation more engaging through gamification. And so while we say elders, actually they also like video games. They also like gamification. So I look forward to SLEC continuing to extend care and support for seniors and elders and making a very positive impact to Singaporeans’ lives.

More Choices for Ageing Well

6.           SLEC’s good work exemplifies how nursing homes form a critical part of our entire long-term care ecosystem in Singapore.  And many seniors with complex healthcare needs, or they have disabilities, more severe disabilities, they depend on nursing home services. It’s their last resort. And as Singapore’s population ages, we recognise that seniors will increasingly have different needs and preferences. So, we do expect the demand for nursing homes to go up, and we are building them like crazy. But actually, our objective is to have as few nursing homes as possible, because if elders, if seniors are healthy, they will not need nursing homes. They can live in the community with some assistance, with some support. So wherever possible, we must support seniors to lead an active and independent life, because that is best for their well-being. That is the best way to fob off frailty for as long as possible.

7.           And that is why we continue to work hard, to offer a diversity of care options for seniors and also their families.  Besides nursing homes, we have launched five Community Care Apartments, and these are really HDB flats designed for seniors and to provide some support for assisted living. The Government has also released land for the private sector to develop similar options, but unsubsidised.  

8.           For seniors who require assisted living but choose to live in their own homes, we are enhancing Home Personal Care service to better respond to their needs and provide more frequent support to them. So you live in your own homes, but we visit you more frequently to provide assisted living. And this will be rolled out island-wide from 2026, early next year.

9.           For healthier seniors, Active Ageing Centres, coupled with Community Health Posts run by our health clusters, will support them to live active lifestyles and strengthen their social connections.  Loneliness is the biggest enemy of seniors. If, through AACs, through community activities, we can prevent seniors from becoming lonely, they will become healthier. Then when there are high concentration of seniors of various needs, we will integrate these services, upgrade these communities into Age Well Neighbourhoods. They are virtually a retirement village.

10.        As these care options evolve and mature, the Government will take stock of them and appropriately size each of them, especially newer concepts such as the Community Care Apartments and Age Well Neighbourhoods, so that they can meet the needs of seniors.  

11.        Another option with the potential to serve the housing and care needs of seniors is the Shared Stay-in Senior Caregiving services – you just think of it, it's shared apartments for seniors, essentially, where a few seniors decide to live together, either in public or private residential housing, and supported by a fewer number of caregivers to go about their daily living tasks. And this makes a lot more sense than each senior hiring their own domestic caregiver, which is the case today.

12.        MOH and MOM, we launched this service we call in short form, the SCS, as a sandbox, meaning an experiment and a pilot, in September 2023 so over the past two years, we have received positive feedback, both from the operators and also families who participated in the project.  We have therefore decided to take the SCS model out of the sandbox, and make it a mainstream service.  

13.        So, the mainstreaming of SCS will start from today. Interested companies can apply to provide the service through the website of the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) Companies that come on board, they will be granted by MOM certain work pass flexibilities, namely additional foreign worker quotas and more options to hire from non-traditional source countries. And we will also introduce training subsidies, which can be used to equip the caregivers with the necessary skills.

14.        We have also published a good practice guide which aims to provide providers, seniors, and their families of the service scope and the good practices of SCS.  The intention is to set some expectations on the role of each stakeholder, without over-regulating the space and stifling the ability of the private sector to respond to the needs of our seniors.

Greater Integration of Care

15.        As we continue to provide more caregiving options for seniors in the community, there is one major challenge, which is, how do we make sure seniors transiting from one care setting to another can do so seamlessly. It’s easier said than done. Once you have many options, run by different operators, you run from one to another, you transit seniors from one to another and back - sometimes is there are lots of friction. So when that happens, we must do our best to ensure that the process is smooth, the process is seamless.  A senior’s health condition for example, there are drug allergies, the medications that they are taking, must be known to the new care provider even before the senior arrives.  Otherwise, care will be compromised. So, this ball, we must try our best not to drop it.  

16.        MOH will take the lead to drive this integration and transition process. Concrete measures and new policies will be needed. It's not just about operators getting to know each other and being nice to each other. You need systems. You need processes.  For example, service providers in various sub-regions will come together, sometimes with some pain, to form an Integrated Community Care Provider scheme, or the ICCP scheme – all of you will be participating, I’m sure. And that way you can better coordinate the delivery of care within the sub-region. And we are developing IT systems to support this function. 

17.        And beyond the ICCP, we are looking at other ways to ensure better continuity of care for seniors.  So, in January next year, which is next month, MOH is tabling the Health Information Bill in Parliament, and hopefully we get it passed in January.  The Bill does not merely govern the sharing of patient data in clinical settings, but also in community settings. 

18.        For example, it will enable community health care providers to share data, actually more than enable it actually requires you to do it, requires you to share patient data so that seniors can transit across various senior care settings seamlessly, and there is no need to perform questioning, data collection and tests repeatedly each time a patient or a senior or an elder changes setting.  Also, by sharing basic administrative data such as just the name and address of vulnerable seniors who live in the community, require befriending and engagement, personnel from public agencies, AIC and our public healthcare clusters can better coordinate their efforts to support these seniors and also to engage them.

19.        I look forward to SLEC participating actively in providing care for seniors, across the range of care services, and in helping us making transition of seniors across settings seamless. Congratulations once again on SLEC’s 5^th anniversary of Residential-based Services. I wish you continued success in the years ahead. Thank you.