SPEECH BY MR ONG YE KUNG, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND COORDINATING MINISTER FOR SOCIAL POLICIES, AT THE OPENING OF ST ANDREW’S COMMUNITY HOSPITAL (BEDOK), 20 NOVEMBER 2025

The Most Reverend Dr Titus Chung, President of St Andrew's Mission Hospital (SAMH) and Singapore Anglican Community Services (SACS), Bishop of Singapore and Archbishop of the Province of the Anglican Church in Southeast Asia

Adjunct Associate Professor Arthur Chern, Group Chief Executive Officer of SAMH and SACS

Friends, partners

Ladies and gentlemen

1.               A very good morning. I am very happy to join you today for this official opening of St Andrew’s Community Hospital at Bedok. We call it SACH (Bedok), and this is the 11th community hospital in Singapore.

The Importance of Community Hospitals

2.               Community hospitals are growing in importance and  are now an integral part of the continuum of care of the healthcare system in Singapore. They are more suitable for many patients, and this is a new thinking. They are actually better for many patients compared to an acute hospital, because these patients, their conditions are stable and they need recovery support more than they need treatment. Usually you need both, but there comes a point in time you need one more than the other. You need more treatment, you stay in an acute hospital; when you need more recovery, it is time to move to a community hospital. And this is also because acute hospitals can be stressful environments. There is always a higher risk of cross-infection from other patients, and in certain circumstances, “deconditioning” can set in for patients with prolonged stays in acute hospitals.

3.               In a community hospital, healthcare workers can focus on the rehabilitation and recovery of the patients who are stable, and prepare them to return to the community and to return to their home. In a way, community hospitals are specialised centres. We always like to go to a specialist when we are sick, but there are times when we come to this specialist centre, because you are a specialist centre in restoring health and mobility.

4.               By doing what they are good at, community hospitals help make our healthcare system more sustainable and cost effective in the long run too. Post COVID-19, we further complemented acute and community hospitals with a new invention we call Transitional Care Facilities (TCFs), and TCFs provide necessary care and support to cater for stable patients who just require more time to finalise their discharge plans. And this further moderated the patient load at acute hospitals.

5.               So with the help of community hospitals and TCFs, despite rising patient load due to an ageing population, we have managed to maintain national bed occupancy rate in acute hospitals at around 85 to 90%. I would have much preferred 85%, but we are constantly at 90% or more. This reflects a heavy workload, but overall, still manageable.

6.               For example, in the western region, Jurong Community Hospital and TCF@West complemented the Ng Teng Fong General Hospital. So as a result, after COVID-19, the bed occupancy rate at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital has come down by about five percentage points. So it is now about mid-80s. And many of you all do not know this, but we used to have a tentage for Ng Teng Fong Hospital outside the A&E, to house more patients. That tentage has now been removed. 

7.               Similarly, SACH (Bedok), with your 100 community hospital beds and 140 TCF beds, will help Changi General Hospital address the eastern region’s healthcare needs. This is much needed by Changi General Hospital, which is one of our busiest hospitals in Singapore. The situation will further improve once the Eastern General Hospital in Bedok North opens in 2029.

8.               On this note, I want to acknowledge the innovative and thoughtful features at SACH (Bedok) which I had a glimpse of while walking here, and all these features facilitate the rehabilitation and recovery of patients. For example: you have an outdoor mobility park with repurposed bus or public transport vehicles. I thank transport operators for donating it, you have a mock-up HDB flat, to help patients and caregivers develop practical daily living skills. You have outdoor green spaces, very conducive for group health activities. The hospital is also designed based on dementia-inclusive principles, which reduces environmental stressors on patients. Beds and patient toilets, I understand, will soon be installed with  AI-driven falls prevention system. You have a programme called “I am a caregiver”, which will better engage, prepare and support caregivers. So a lot of thought have gone into designing not just the physical infrastructure, but all your programmes.

Evolving Role of Allied Health Professionals

9.               Community hospitals and TCFs are not just physical infrastructure, as this hospital has illustrated. At their core are the healthcare workers that transform them into effective care settings. And two major human pillars of community hospitals, I think are the nurses and allied health professionals.

10.           I spoke about the evolving role of nurses earlier this year at the Nurses’ Merit Award ceremony. I outlined how we want to enhance the roles of nurses, especially in the community, in nursing homes, in palliative care, so that they can practise at the top of their licences. The Ministry of Health (MOH) is working with the Singapore Nursing Board and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to implement this, and in the coming months, I will provide an update. But as for today, I want to talk about this group of healthcare workers who are the allied health professionals.

11.           In a rehabilitative setting, AHPs - allied health practitioners, play a vital role in restoring psychosocial, physical and cognitive functions of patients, and they are growing in importance.

12.           There are roughly three areas of work – remuneration, standards and training pathways. On remuneration, it is always important - for the community care sector, we have been working with employers to uplift the sector salaries over the years, including the publication of sector-wide salary guidelines that was done last year. We will be updating these guidelines next year, following salary enhancements rolled out in the public healthcare clusters in 2025. What it means is we are raising salaries, and we are supporting you to pay higher salaries to your healthcare workers.

13.           On standards, we tier the level of clinical oversight, such that AHPs performing higher-risk clinical tasks, they are regulated and registered under the Allied Health Professions Act. And these include physiotherapists, occupational therapists (OTs), diagnostic radiographers. For AHPs whose practice is associated with lower assessed risks, such as audiologists, we work with the professionals and their respective associations to maintain quality care through self-regulation.

14.           MOH has announced that we will be registering psychologists under the Allied Health Professions Act. This will strengthen mental health services, raise professional standards, safeguard patient safety and increase public confidence in psychological services, which are growing in importance. And we expect the new policy to be implemented in early 2027.

15.           We are now working on reviewing the training pathways for AHPs. Years ago, there used to be only polytechnic training pathways for AHPs. Over the years, this was enhanced progressively to include undergraduate programmes offered by the Singapore Institute of Technology and also Master’s programmes offered by the National University of Singapore. 

Training Pathways for AHPs

16.           Having strengthened the pathways over the years, we now need to take the next step, and it is a huge step. We have to make the training pathways more flexible, more agile, more supportive of the career development of AHPs. Today, AHPs are trained in strict verticals, and many of you will know that when you are trained as  radiographers, dietitians, OTs, physiotherapists, psychologists, and so on, with little scope for cross disciplinary training and role-sharing.  

17.           This is not ideal. Why? Because healthcare is increasingly delivered outside of acute hospitals, as I explained earlier - including in community hospitals. The closer you are to community and social settings, you will find that healthcare workers are required to support the patients more holisticially. In an acute hospital you are often just fixing one problem. In a community, you are fixing all kinds of problems holistically, juggling many roles at the same time. That means the healthcare worker in the community setting most likely needs to perform multiple roles. And often, AHPs will lead teams and work across disciplines to support patients holistically in the community. 

18.           We must therefore transform the way AHPs are trained. We can take a leaf from how polytechnics reviewed their courses about ten years ago, when I was Education Minister. At that time, the polytechnics had many specific courses for sub-occupations. I would not even say for occupations, sub-occupations. You take engineering for example, there is a diploma course for civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical, chemical, aerospace, which students would choose to specialise from day one of being admitted into polytechnics. And actually that was too early.

19.           So in a decisive move, many of these sub-occupational courses that were narrow in scope, they were merged, or they were phased out. Common polytechnic first year curricula were then developed around broader disciplines such as engineering, common first year. IT, common first year. Business, common first year. Students go to these common first year programmes, and in their second year they decide what is their specialty. And that is better for them because you have the first year of broad-based training, and you put yourself in a better position to decide on what you want to focus on in your second year. 

20.           So it benefits students, by laying this stronger foundation. It helps the students better decide on their specialities a year later. After graduation, with that stronger foundation, they are also in a better position to continue their learning, further deepening their speciality and acquiring new adjacent specialised AHP skills.  

21.           Aligned with this approach, we will group AHPs around three domains. 

22.           First, the psychosocial and behavioural domain, and this includes AHPs such as clinical counsellors, psychologists and medical social workers.

23.           Second, the rehabilitation and functional domain, with speech therapists, PTs, OTs, and podiatrists. 

24.           Third, the diagnostics and therapeutics domain, with radiation therapists and medical laboratory technologists.

25.           Within selected AHP domains, IHLs will develop shared core modules to incorporate across the first-year curriculum of relevant programmes. Beyond that, the training pathway will also be built based on “learning blocks”, each representing a specific task that an AHP is expected to perform in the healthcare work environment. 

26.           Each block will be stackable, and when stacked enough, they form a formal certification or qualification, thereby enabling AHPs to diversify or pivot into new roles as care needs change later. So take for example, an AHP trained through the rehabilitation and functional domain, can specialise to become a physiotherapist during his formal education, and later on after he starts work, undertake new learning blocks training to also qualify as an occupational therapist.

27.           This is a significant transformation, it will take us a few years to develop this, and MOH is working closely with the Allied Health Professional Boards and various Institutes of Higher Learning. We will expect shared core modules to be rolled out from 2027.

Closing

28.           Finally, let me just say a few words about our host today. I thank the SACH team for your hard work and dedication, which is over a century. It is a very long and illustrious service journey, starting from your first clinic at Bencoolen Street, then you have St Andrew’s Mission Hospital for Women and Children, and the St Andrew’s Orthopaedic Hospital to care for children with polio and tuberculosis. They are not there anymore, but they are a part of your history.

29.           But your most lasting legacy, in my view, is the St Andrew’s Community Hospital, which was established in 1992 and it is our first community hospital to provide intermediate medical care. I think it was an idea probably ahead of its time, but fresh and innovative. You planted a seed which has blossomed into a permanent and indispensable feature of our healthcare system. And today, Community Hospitals is an important part of the entire healthcare system.

30.           Through this new facility, SACH will continue to be an essential partner in our healthcare system by giving comfort and care to many patients, reducing the strain on acute hospitals, extending quality care into the community, supporting seniors especially, to age well with dignity. I wish you many more years of dedication and service ahead, and look forward to our ever closer partnership. Thank you very much.