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8 July 2013
Question No. 558
Name of Person: Mr Png Eng Huat
Question
To ask the Minister for Health in the past five years (a) what is the average waiting time at the Accident and Emergency Department of each of our public hospitals; and (b) what are the measures taken to improve the waiting time given the current dengue situation.
Answer
1. Patients at the emergency departments (EDs) are prioritised and attended to based on the severity of their conditions. All life-threatening (P1) cases are attended to immediately. For emergency but non-life-threatening (P2) cases, the median waiting times across the EDs ranged between 14-49 min in 2008; and between 15-29 min in 2012.
2. For patients who required admissions, the median waiting time for admission ranged between 0.3-2.2 hours in 2008; and between 0.1 to 3.1 hours in 2012. Even while patients wait at the EDs for admission, medical teams continue to monitor them and institute appropriate investigations and treatments.
3. To reduce the waiting time to consultation, our hospitals increase manpower and improve processes to enhance efficiency. Such measures include calibrating the shifts of doctors and nurses based on anticipated patient load, deploying nurses from other work areas (e.g. inpatient units) that are less busy to assist at the ED, and providing support services (e.g. assisting with laboratory and radiological investigations).
4. The waiting time to admission is dependent on the overall bed availability at any point in time. In anticipation of the increase in dengue cases, MOH has worked with hospitals to renovate suitable spaces within hospital campuses to inject new bed capacity, including temporary capacity, and deployed more nurses and doctors to staff the added capacity. Hospitals also actively review and work with the Agency for Integrated Care to discharge patients who are medically stable to long term care facilities to free up hospital beds for those in need.
5. Hospitals have also been informed that suspect and confirmed cases of dengue who return to emergency departments within 24 to 48 hours should be appropriately prioritised for attention.