WAITING TIME FOR ADMISSION TO ELDERLY HOMES

14 JANUARY 2013

Question No. 889

WAITING TIME FOR ADMISSION TO ELDERLY HOMES

Name of Person: Mr David Ong Kim Huat

Question

To ask the Minister for Health (a) how many elderly persons are currently waiting for admission into an elderly home and what is the current waiting time; and (b) what is the Ministry's plan to manage this demand given the fast ageing population. 

Answer

1.    There are about 60 nursing homes in Singapore providing some 9,000 beds today for the elderly with high care needs. About 500 seniors are currently on the waiting list for a nursing home bed, and the average waiting time for admission to a nursing home is about four months. MOH is building more nursing homes to meet the increase in demand. Over 500 more nursing home beds will come on-stream in 2013. A further 3,300 beds will be added with the development of ten new nursing homes by 2016.

2.    MOH is also working with MSF to provide other alternatives to nursing homes. We are developing a range of home- and community-based aged care services to support families to care for their loved ones at home.  We target to double the capacity of home-based healthcare services, such as home nursing and home medical services, to serve up to 10,000 seniors, and more than triple the capacity of home-based social care, such as meals delivery, escort for medical appointments, and personal care services like cleaning and housekeeping to serve up to 7,500 seniors by 2020.

3.     The Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) has also worked with various voluntary welfare organisations to develop the Singapore Programme for Integrated Care for the Elderly (SPICE), which provides care in the day time for dependent seniors who would otherwise need to be cared for in nursing homes. Seniors under this programme can go to a SPICE centre in the day time and receive nursing, medical, rehabilitative, personal as well as custodial care services. They can receive some of these services at home on days when they cannot visit the centres physically. The cost of SPICE is comparable to that of nursing home care. SPICE thus enables their caregivers to continue to work while caring for their seniors in the community. We intend to develop more of such programmes and care options to enable our seniors to age-in-place in the community.