Our population currently stands at 4.2 million, with about 3.5 million Singapore residents. The percentage of Singapore residents aged 65 years and above is projected to rise rapidly from 8% of the population in 2004. Average life expectancy of Singaporeans has also steadily increased and is now at 79.3 years. In tandem, with increasing affluence, there is a high prevalence of chronic, non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolemia. In 2004, cancer, ischaemic heart disease and pneumonia together accounted for 60% of total deaths. At the same time, infectious diseases continue to be a risk as demonstrated by the SARS outbreak in 2003.
Healthcare services are provided by different types of providers throughout the entire healthcare value chain from primary care to tertiary care through to step-down care.
- Primary Care
Primary care includes primary medical treatment, preventive healthcare and health education. These services are provided through a network of 16 outpatient polyclinics and 1900 private General Practitioners (GPs). The former caters to about 20% of primary care needs while the GPs provide the remaining 80%.
- Tertiary and Acute Care
These services are provided by a network of 13 public and 16 private hospitals. The public hospitals are structured into two hospital groups - SingHealth Group and National Healthcare Group - that operate as not-for-profit private companies. Each of these clusters consists of both general hospitals that provide multi-disciplinary healthcare services and specialised hospitals in various disciplines e.g. obstetrics and gynaecology and ophthalmology. Private healthcare is provided by two main providers - Raffles Medical Group and Parkway Group Healthcare - with similar specialist disciplines and comparable facilities to the public clusters.
- Step-Down Care
Step-down care services are mostly provided by voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs). These organisations help to run 53 nursing homes and 27 day rehabilitation centres. 10 of them provide home medical services and 13 others have home nursing services. In addition, the VWOs also run five other community hospitals and four chronic sick hospitals. Besides the facilities provided by the VWOs, there are also geriatric units in four of the public acute hospitals.
