Fee Revision Of Hospital Services

11 Sep 2002

The Ministry of Health is committed towards providing Singaporeans, through our public sector hospitals and institutions, access to good and affordable healthcare that is appropriate to needs. To continue to provide quality healthcare, public sector hospitals must be responsive to medical advances, demographic changes and also able to retain good staff by offering competitive remuneration. These initiatives would however inevitably increase their operating costs.

The clusters are not-for-profit entities. As non-for-profit entities, their main objective is not to maximise profits. However like any other operating entities, the public sector hospitals need to exercise financial prudence to ensure their continued viability. Thus as operating costs increase, they would have to correspondingly increase their fees.

The increase in running cost is due in part to the rise in manpower cost, which is the single largest component at 60% of total running cost. To keep pace with advances in medical technology, the cost of medical supplies such as drugs, which account for another 15% of the total running cost, will also rise. The cost of replacing medical equipment, utilities etc will also add to the increase in the hospitals? running cost. As such, the hospitals review their fees and charges regularly to ensure that fee increases, if needed, are minimised.

Public sector hospitals have emphasised cost management and improved productivity to moderate cost increases. Although these measures have succeeded, to a certain extent, in cushioning the impact of increased healthcare cost on patients (the last major fee revisions were in Jan/Feb 01), some increase over time is unavoidable. In this respect the public sector hospitals have adopted the principle of small but regular fee increases instead of a big increase once every few years. In revising their fees and charges, they seek to ensure a balance between affordability for the patients and the hospitals? longer-term financial viability.

For Singaporeans who still cannot afford to pay even the highly subsidised rates due to financial hardship, they can apply for Medifund. They should approach the hospitals? medical social workers for assistance. The Ministry would like to give the assurance that no Singaporeans would be denied essential medical care because of their inability to pay.

The details of the fee revision are as follows:

Alexandra Hospital, click here.

Changi General Hospital, click here.

KK Women's & Children's Hospital (Inpatient), click here.

KK Women's & Children's Hospital (Outpatient), click here.

National Cancer Centre, click here.

National Heart Centre, click here.

National Neuroscience Institute, click here.

National Skin Centre, click here.

Singapore General Hospital, click here.

Tan Tock Seng Hospital, click here.

Woodbridge Hospital, click here.