When the 2 medical clusters, Singhealth & National Health were first formed in 2000, 2 senior civil servants were seconded to run them. Prof Teo Ser Kiat ran Singhealth and the other was run by Tan Tee How. Tan Tee How has 2:1 in Bus Ad. Both were aspiring and competitive performers who wanted to show their ability and began competing. Price of medication began to rise plus other things such as cost when referred by GPs compared to polyclinic. Very soon complaints started to come in including from PAP MPs particularly Tan Cheng Bock and Lily Kong. Patients were persuaded to upgrade as Medisave became popular to ensure bed management efficiency and revenue growth. The bigger culprit was NHG.
Things came to head in 2003 and in the cabinet reshuffle, Lim Hng Kiang was moved on and Khaw was made Acting Minister for Health. The very first thing Khaw did was pick a medical conference and use his speech to clear the air, notify everyone that the issues are known and the new ground rules in terms of competition among clusters. It was all very cryptic but Sr Civil Servants and the medical fraternity knew what was going on. Here are the excerpts which are quite telling;
Before re-joining
MOH, I heard many critical comments on cluster competition:
that competition between the clusters has led to duplication,
higher costs and perhaps, even over-consumption.
My observation is that where cluster competition has gone
a bit astray is when they compete on enlarging market share.
If the CEO is measured and rewarded for enlarging
market share, he would obviously go for more patientdays,
more clinic visits, more surgeries, more prescriptions.
That speech was reproduced by SMA so it members became aware that the Govt knows the concerns, that there is a new sheriff in town, and things will change. And it did. Cost did come down and the CEO KPIs were completely changed.
When I saw CPMKD's thread, I knew how these things can get out of hand as it happened before. This particular episode caught the eye of the old man and he asked to see the stats from Medisave and its use for bed accommodation upgrades. He was not pleased. He considered it an abuse as it was meant to cover the citizen for his whole life. Directives were then issued.
Its now 13 years. 8 people died in the Renal ward from cluster contamination and the minister did not know about it. So people tend to get emotional about these incidents if not explained by hospital staff can lead to poor outcomes. One can reasonably conclude based on the past on the possibility of greed. In TS's opening post he did mention that the ward nurse could not explain the empty beds. I am sure she would be a better person to explain than patient even if they have been in wards for a long time.
I think everyone is getting too emotional. There are easiler ways, no need to give false info to push patients to B2.
I ever questioned them why there are empty beds but patients are sleeping along corridors. They told me that there are such thing called scheduled surgeries and patients need to be warded after surgery. Therefore, they need to reserve beds for patients for such schedule surgeries, something like advance booking. haha