OPENING ADDRESS BY MR GAN KIM YONG, MINISTER FOR HEALTH, AT THE OPENING CEREMONY OF SINGAPORE GENERAL HOSPITAL’S 23RD ANNUAL SCIENTIFIC MEETING, 12 APRIL 2019

Professor Ivy Ng, Group CEO, SingHealth
Professor Kenneth Kwek, CEO, Singapore General Hospital
Professor Fong Kok Yong, Chairman, Medical Board, SGH
A/Prof Deidre Anne de Silva, Organising Chairperson
Distinguished speakers and guests

Introduction 
Good morning. It is my pleasure to join you today at the 23^rd Singapore General Hospital (SGH) Annual Scientific Meeting.       

2.         The theme for this year’s meeting is aptly chosen – “Advancing Care: Above and Beyond”. It resonates well with the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) ongoing care transformation journey. Guided by our three “Beyonds”, the transformation will help us cope with the rising demand for healthcare services as a result of a fast ageing population, coupled with increasing chronic disease burden.

Moving Upstream Towards Preventive Care

3.         The first strategy to move Beyond Healthcare to Health aims to move care upstream towards preventive care. We all know that preventative medicine is more pertinent and imperative in an ageing population like Singapore, to help our people not only live long, but also live well.  We want to create a supportive environment for all Singaporeans to lead healthier lives. The Health Promotion Board (HPB) will continue to make healthier food and drink options more easily available to Singaporeans through its Healthier Dining Programme. HPB also partners with the industry to develop healthier food products, such as whole grain rice and noodles, as well as healthier oils. HPB’s National Steps Challenge has also motivated many Singaporeans to take more steps and stay physically active.

4.         Apart from promoting healthier lifestyles, programmes that encourage regular screening and post-screening follow-up will also improve early detection and management of health conditions. Since 2014, SingHealth, together with its partners, has actively reached out to encourage eligible residents to attend community-based cardiovascular risk screening at community centres and Senior Activity Centres. Residents with abnormal screening results are referred to primary care physicians for follow-up. To date, more than 32,000 residents have been screened and benefited from the programme.

5.         To further support preventive care for the elderly population, SingHealth also launched the Community Falls Prevention Programme for pre-frail seniors. Under this programme, seniors identified to be at risk for falls receive early intervention through individualised health coaching, and are referred for either community-based structured exercises, rehabilitation programmes or medical consultations. To date, 850 elderly residents have benefitted from this programme.

Anchoring Care in the Community

6.         With increasing healthcare needs, it is not sustainable for patient care to be centered in hospitals. Rather, we should anchor care in the community where possible to enable patients to receive appropriate care nearer to their home. We want to move Beyond Hospital to Community. Here, healthcare professionals in the hospitals can contribute by helping to develop partnerships with primary, intermediate and long-term care partners to strengthen primary care and build capabilities in community care. SingHealth has been actively participating in many MOH community- based initiatives. One such example is the establishment of the SingHealth Primary Care Network since early 2018, to support their GP partner clinics in delivering more holistic team-based chronic disease management to their patients. This is in line with our efforts to encourage patients to develop trusting, long-term relationships with their family doctors under our “One Singaporean, One Family Doctor” vision.

7.         Another example is SingHealth’s Hospital to Home Programme, which was launched in April 2017. The programme has enabled patients to stay well, get well and age well in the community. The multi-disciplinary care team work closely with their community partners to support patients’ health and social needs after their discharge from hospital. By working together through these partnerships, we can create synergies by tapping on resources in our healthcare and social systems. To date, close to 9,000 SGH patients have benefitted from this initiative.

Optimising Healthcare Outcomes through Value-Driven Care

8.         Our third strategy to move Beyond Quality to Value aims to keep our healthcare system sustainable and affordable, by looking into treatment protocols that provide the best value for patients. One key aspect is the optimisation of healthcare outcomes through the introduction of Value-Driven Care (VDC) programme.

9.         On this front, MOH has identified 17 high-impact surgical and medical conditions such as Total Knee Replacement and Community-Acquired Pneumonia, which are high volume, high cost conditions that will benefit from the VDC programme. We have standardised quality indicators for most of the 17 conditions, and will be working closely with the various VDC workgroups to analyse data, and identify opportunities to improve clinical outcomes in a cost-effective way.

10.      I am encouraged by the support from our public healthcare institutions for this key initiative. Many clinicians are involved in the VDC programme as members of the National Value-based Healthcare Workgroup or condition-specific VDC clinical workgroups.

11.      The quest to constantly improve the value of our healthcare services is critical to the sustainability of our healthcare system. Everyone of us - clinicians, nurses, allied health professionals, quality and value officers, data analysts and administration and finance staff - has a key role to play in helping us drive value. I look forward to your support as SingHealth embarks on this value improvement journey with MOH.

Launch of SingHealth Duke-NUS Transplant Centre

12.      Besides partnering us in the three Beyonds, SingHealth is also advancing care as it constantly looks at ways to promote individual and population health, and improve patient care and outcomes, by leveraging strengths in clinical service, research, innovation and education. This is also the concept of SingHealth Duke-NUS Disease Centres which bring together expertise in different relevant areas, and enhance integrated care through the collaboration of SingHealth institutions. For example, SGH clinicians and researchers from different fields collaborate to further their research in improving care for blood cancer patients, where more than half of the high-risk multiple myeloma patients were successfully treated with a new drug combination under a clinical trial.

13.      Today, I am pleased to announce the launch of another SingHealth Duke-NUS Disease Centre – the SingHealth Duke-NUS Disease Centre for Transplant – which will consolidate all SingHealth’s solid organs as well as tissue and cellular transplantation services. This new Transplant centre aims to harmonise SingHealth’s clinical expertise for transplant with its research and education capabilities. It will explore ways to improve the transplant survival rates, optimise the quality of patients’ lives and keep transplant-related cost affordable for patients. The new centre will work closely with the National Organ Transplant Unit to train more healthcare professionals on organ transplant and donation, and raise awareness among organ failure patients in considering living organ transplant as a treatment option.

Closing

14.      The collaboration and sharing of expertise by professionals and researchers from various disciplines at this meeting are essential as we explore new solutions for better patient care. I hope that you will have a fruitful time, exchanging ideas on evolving models of care to bring value to our patients.

Thank you.