Healthcare System Benchmarking and Elderly Healthcare

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament

Ms Joan Pereira

MP for Tanjong Pagar GRC

Question No. 768

To ask the Minister for Health (a) what benchmarks are used to measure the quality of healthcare delivery and the adequacy of healthcare resources such as staffing and infrastructure; and (b) how does the Ministry determine whether our elderly healthcare needs are sufficiently covered by the Pioneer Generation Package and MediShield Life.

Oral Answer

1.    Singapore’s healthcare system has served us well. With our life expectancies at birth of 81.9 years in 2015, Singapore residents are not just living longer, but are also enjoying more healthy years of life. We were ranked first and third in the world for male and female Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE) respectively, according to a 2015 Global Burden of Disease study (GBD) by The Lancet^[1]. There are certainly areas where we can still improve.  

2.    In addition to quality of care, MOH continues to invest in developing healthcare infrastructure, manpower and technology in line with our Healthcare 2020 Masterplan so as to meet our current and future healthcare needs.  Between 2014 and 2020, we will add about 3,500 more acute hospital and community hospital beds, 6,300 more nursing home beds as well as 8,300 more home and centre-based care places.

3.     Under the 2020 Healthcare Manpower Plan announced recently, we are taking steps to expand our healthcare workforce by 30,000 between 2015 and 2020 to meet the changing needs of Singapore’s population. Through care redesign and adoption of technology, we will further enhance the delivery of healthcare services.

4.    Besides improving quality and access, we have also substantially improved healthcare affordability to provide better assurance especially to our elderly. For example, the Pioneer Generation Package provides significant support for Pioneers. Since the Package was launched in 2014, more than 400,000 Pioneers have benefited from it, and the Government has provided over $700 million in benefits in total.

5.    MediShield Life now provides lifetime protection for large hospitalisation bills for all Singaporeans, including coverage for the elderly, many of whom were previously uninsured or unable to obtain coverage. In its first eleven months, MediShield Life paid out about $282m for claims by older Singaporeans aged above 65, almost double the total $151m payout under the previous MediShield over the same period last year.

6.    MOH will continue to review affordability and coverage of healthcare for the elderly, while ensuring that our healthcare financing system is sustainable over the long term.          

[1] Global, regional, and national disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 315 diseases and injuries and healthy life expectancy (HALE), 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. The Lancet.  2016 Oct 8