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Nathalie Ng, Corporate Communications Executive
A person-centred healthcare system that is easy to navigate, accessible, affordable, convenient and meet the needs of the patient – this was one of the primary goals that Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) Prof Philip Choo intend for the cluster to drive towards, as shared in this year’s National Healthcare Group-National Skin Centre (NHG-NSC) GCEO Townhall.
Held on 24 October, Monday, at NSC’s auditorium, Prof Choo highlighted the increasingly fraught healthcare system, where approximately 70% of the population die in hospitals, 20% in other health institutions and less than 10% dying in their own homes, which was ironically polled to be most favoured option among Singaporeans. Prof Choo emphasised the pressing need to shift the majority of the population to ‘dying well at home’. He also pointed out the existing flaws in the system, where institutions medicalise dying and unhealthy behaviours by increasing dosage of medication to address worsening health conditions, rather than tackling the root cause of the diseases.
“We must make ourselves a relationship-based healthcare system, where patients are always under the ‘ownership’ of a team at any one point – be it the primary care, outpatient care or the palliative care team. Inpatient care team should always be a transient stage,” Prof Choo stated. In order to achieve this, we must change the way we operate in our clinics as they are currently not built to sustain such a system, he added.
Prof Choo then shared the NHG engine to relationship excellence with the audience, where efforts are primarily channelled into four essential aspects – organisation development, people development, knowledge development and leadership development, in order to achieve a step closer to an ideal healthcare system where it is not just primarily an acute care system, but one that focuses on prevention and maintenance of the population’s health.