Health Care - Overload

Besides our transport infrastructure being overload, our hospitals, polyclinics and specialist clinics are also badly overload. So now the government is trying to get us to consult our GPs instead. But getting patients to go to their GPs is unlikely to resolve the problem. Even with subsidy, GP consultation will cost more.

MOH should consider having more than 1 Polyclinic per estate. Some estate has larger population than others, and having 1 polyclinic is insufficient to meet the patient load. Bearing in mind S'pore population has increase to more than 5 millions the last decade, the existing numbers of polyclinic could not cope with the demand. For example, the entrance lobby space has been shrink in some polyclinic due to extra chairs and counters set up to handle the patient initial registration. Patient load and traffic increase and yet public space decreases, which resulted in overcrowding.

Then the clinic stops taking in patients without appointment at 10 am though it operates till 12.30pm on Sat. This resulted in many patients being turned away. The reason is it has reached the maximum patient load for the day. This is due to lack of foresight by MOH. Now they try to get GP to lighten the load. But our govt is responsible to ensure affordable health care. Should not MOH starts planning for more polyclinics to be build ?