SM Lee Hsien Loong at the Official Opening of the Woodlands Health Campus

Ms Jennie Chua, Chairman, Woodlands Health Development Board Committee
Colleagues from MOH, NHG, and Woodlands Health,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning to everybody,

A community-centred Woodlands Health Campus

I am very happy to join all of you today for the official opening of Woodlands Health. I know that residents here have been eagerly anticipating, looking forward to today’s opening. Because residents of Woodlands, Sembawang, Choa Chu Kang, and nearby areas, will now have more convenient access to acute hospital services. They will no longer have to travel all the way to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) or Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (NTFGH), they can come here. And this is a new campus which will boost bed capacity in the Northern region, providing 1,000 more acute and community hospital beds when fully opened.

I made an informal visit in April, as you have just seen, during the “soft launch”, when the hospital was just starting to operate. One of the first things the team showed me was a scale model of the campus, and how it fits in to the surrounding environment – the neighbourhood. Where we are today used to be a large field used by residents for recreational activities and exercise. And the Woodlands Health team felt, it is important to preserve these strong community ties. So, when we decided to build a hospital here, the team made it a point to engage residents in the design process. They collected views and ideas from residents and community partners, including what these stakeholders would like to see in a new hospital. Woodlands Health also conducted research to understand the profile of the local community – who lives here, what their lifestyles are, what are their work and play routines.

And the result is an open concept healthcare campus, nestled within lush green spaces that bring people closer to nature. It is also fully integrated with the Woodlands Healing Garden – at 1.5-hectares, this is NParks’ largest purpose-built therapeutic garden. This creates a calming and inviting environment, where patients can undergo “green therapy”.

Woodlands Health has been designed to address the community’s diverse healthcare needs, both now and into the future. Given the mix of seniors and young families in the region, the campus is set up to treat increasingly prevalent conditions amongst young people, including obesity, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease. Furthermore, learning from COVID-19, the campus has been designed modularly. This way, it can accommodate surges in patient numbers. Spaces can be rapidly converted to other uses, such as isolation wards or critical care facilities.

The opening of Woodlands Health today is part of MOH’s efforts to expand national healthcare capacity and improve access to healthcare services across the island. In the past 10 years, we have opened three new general hospitals. Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, Sengkang General Hospital, and now the Woodlands Health Campus. Each one involved not only nearly a billion dollars of capital investment, but also required MOH and the public healthcare clusters to recruit and build a new team of medical professionals to staff it properly, and deliver the high-quality medical services that Singaporeans expect. Each expansion increased capacity, and each time, it came not a moment too soon. The good news is that Singaporeans are living longer and healthier lives. But our population is ageing rapidly. Patient numbers and demand for healthcare services is rising steadily. In less than 5 years since pre-COVID-19 days, the average length of stay has increased from six to seven days, which by itself pushes up demand for hospital beds by 15%. Our healthcare staff are under considerable pressure from the high patient load. They have done an outstanding job, keeping up with the workload and continuing to deliver good care to all their patients. So, to all our healthcare staff: I thank you, all of you, for your hard work, dedication, and many sacrifices. We will do our best to support you, take care of your well-being, and ensure the load remains manageable.

Transforming our approach to healthcare

Looking ahead, we must grow our hospital capacity, to take care of the growing number of seniors who will need medical care. MOH has plans to expand existing hospitals, redevelop Alexandra Hospital, open a new Eastern General Hospital Campus, plus another new public hospital in Tengah, and possibly a new non-profit private hospital too. But our response cannot just be to keep on expanding our hospitals and adding acute bed capacity. The problem with this approach is not just the heavy fiscal cost, or the difficulty of finding suitable plots of land to build more hospitals. Just as critically, we will run short of medical and nursing manpower to staff the additional hospitals.

Therefore we need to transform our approach to delivering healthcare. And Woodlands Health demonstrates three ways of doing so.

First, Woodlands Health consolidates a comprehensive suite of services in a single location. It integrates an acute hospital, community hospital, and a nursing home, all in a single campus. Patients can receive the full range of services here. The Campus will not only offer the usual services (management of acute emergencies, rehabilitation, and recovery); but it will also provide long-term care services – including day care, home care, nursing care, and palliative care. This makes it much easier to right-site patients, and also a lot more convenient for patients to transition seamlessly from treatment to convalescence, and to receive the appropriate care in one place.

Secondly, Woodlands Health will exploit technology to raise operational efficiency and improve patient care and caregiver experience. For example, when I visited, I saw how the automated pharmacy streamlined dispensary processes. It is safer, because human errors are reduced. It is also faster, significantly shortening the wait time to collect the medicine. Another example is the Patient Bedside Terminal (PBT). Traditionally, in the wards, nurses communicate information to patients in person, briefing them face-to-face on their condition, their test results, and scheduled activities. As a result, patients have limited opportunities to engage actively in their own care plan, and to stay updated on their recovery progress. With the terminals, patients can access the care plan for their stay themselves, their vital signs charts, and educational resources relevant to their condition via the terminal, and participate more actively in their recovery journey. The Patient Bedside Terminal also functions like an inflight entertainment system where patients can order their preferred meals, or even watch YouTube videos, presumably not too exciting ones!

Thirdly, Woodlands Health, like other acute hospitals, is stepping up efforts to go upstream and provide care in the community. It has already begun delivering healthcare in the community through its WH@Home programme. This enables patients to be treated and to recuperate in a comfortable home environment, while also freeing up acute capacity in hospitals for those who need it most. Woodlands Health has also expanded upstream efforts to promote healthy living amongst residents. It has actively engaged residents in community events, for example by delivering educational talks on health, and deploying health coaches to help residents develop healthier lifestyles. To reach out to younger people – students and young Singaporeans – Woodlands Health has launched the Community of Hope initiative, or CHOPE. For older folks, it has organised a frailty prevention programme with partners such as Sunlove Active Ageing Centre.

Ultimately, the best form of healthcare is to stay healthy for as long as we can. That is why we have shifted our emphasis towards preventative care. Last year, MOH introduced two programmes – Healthier SG and Age Well SG – to enable each of us to take more responsibility for our own health, supported by family doctors and community partners. When you enrol, you will be directed to an extensive range of activities tailored to your personal needs, e.g. reminders to go for health screenings, and tips on leading a healthier lifestyle. I am glad that many Singaporeans have signed up. If you have not registered yet, I urge you to do so.

Overall, our healthcare system in Singapore is in good shape. Singaporeans have access to high quality and affordable healthcare, and wait times are reasonable. But please do not underestimate the difficulty of keeping the healthcare system working well. There are too many examples elsewhere of healthcare services practically at breaking point. Populations suffer from poor healthcare delivery and long wait times, or exorbitant medical bills and high insurance premiums. And it shows in the outcomes – population health deteriorates, so does the quality of life, given life expectancy. We must do our utmost to keep strengthening our healthcare system, and to continue delivering high quality, affordable healthcare to all Singaporeans. But this requires tough decisions and trade-offs. We have to keep investing significant resources – money, land, and personnel: to continue improving our facilities and infrastructure, and training more competent doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals. We must also maintain discipline not to overtreat or overprescribe, and to be discriminating in adopting new medical treatments, procedures, drugs, and technology, in order to keep our overall healthcare costs sustainable over the long-term. At the same time, we must maintain the right mix of government subsidies, medical insurance, and individual co-payment, to minimise wrong, perverse incentives which would lead to unsatisfactory outcomes. The government will continue to work hard at these issues, keeping Singaporeans’ best interests at heart.

Conclusion

On a lighter note, let me share one more highlight from my earlier visit: the hospital food, or I should say the Woodlands Healthcare food. People often have a perception that hospital food is bland and tasteless, maybe because when you are sick and unwell, any food that is prepared even if it is five stars will taste off. But I had a chance to sample a few items from the inpatient menu. We had mutton vindaloo, and even plant-based mapo tofu for vegetarians. There were many other interesting choices on the menu – nasi lemak, Thai green curry, and even Irish beef stew – certainly not your typical hospital fare! This is one example of how the team has done its best to make the patients’ stay a little more comfortable, with just the right touch of hospitality. I think I see Jennie Chua’s personal touch here, given her many years of experience in the hospitality industry and formidable reputation. On behalf of MOH, and all the residents, I would like to thank Jennie – she had originally wanted to retire after completing her term as Chairman of Alexandra Health, but agreed to see through this project. I am very glad she did so, because she and her team have done an excellent job with this Woodlands Health Campus. So to Jennie and all of her team – thank you very much indeed!

Also a very big thank you to all the staff of Woodlands Health. Many of you were previously nested elsewhere (in Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and Sengkang General Hospital) and have since returned to Woodlands Health. Thank you for your patience and commitment to delivering better health outcomes for our residents, and to improving the healthcare system in Singapore.

Once again, my warmest congratulations to all of the groups, National Healthcare Group, Woodlands Health, and all the partner organisations on today’s official opening, and to MOH too – this one took 10 years, the next one, probably faster.

Thank you.