PUSH TO REDUCE PRESSURE ON POLYCLINICS<\/p>\n
The need for stronger support comes as the Ministry of Health pushes for more patient care to move upstream into the community, with family doctors taking on a bigger role.<\/p>\n
The ministry also aims to reduce pressure on polyclinics, which Health Minister Ong Ye Kung has said cannot cope alone with growing demand from patients with complex chronic diseases.<\/p>\n
But while the burden on polyclinics may ease, GPs said the strain is being transferred to smaller clinics like theirs.<\/p>\n
Dr Vincent Tok of Shalom Medical Clinic, located in Bras Basah Complex, said many clinics are having trouble keeping up with the growing workload using their existing manpower.<\/p>\n
The clinic has seen a 10 to 15 per cent rise in the number of chronic disease and preventive care cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, most clinics are struggling with the doctor and the clinic assistants that they had earlier, but that load is getting too heavy to bear,\u201d said Dr Tok.<\/p>\n
He added that if clinics have to increase their level of care, not only will its staff have to take on more responsibilities, but costs will also rise.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause obviously, while we try to help patients as much as we can financially, sometimes we reduce fees or we waive fees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously that cannot be a mass model, and that’s where we need the government’s help with the fair remuneration for the additional services and costs that we’re now being asked to provide.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, the government increased its grants for family clinics by 52 per cent to S$350 million (US$273 million), up from S$230 million in 2022. This works out to an average of more than S$140,000 per clinic.<\/p>\n
Still, Dr Tok said more support is needed as operating costs continue to rise. For his clinic, costs have increased by at least 20 per cent over the past year.<\/p>\n
He added that clinics also need more manpower for administrative work and patient outreach efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUSH TO REDUCE PRESSURE ON POLYCLINICS The need for stronger support comes as the Ministry of Health pushes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":970173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4316],"tags":[46393,210980,6523,105,4348,16,15],"class_list":["post-970172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-chronic-illness","tag-family-doctors","tag-general-practitioners","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116599196621984353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/970173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}