SINGAPORE – The Republic’s ninth community hospital was opened on Saturday (Dec 7) in Outram, the first community hospital providing step-down care in southern Singapore where government figures show there is a higher proportion of patients aged 65 years and older.

Outram Community Hospital (OCH) has been designed and furnished to resemble a public estate, so patients can learn how to adapt after they return home.

For example, the hospital has facilities that resemble the interiors of buses and trains, for patients to learn to navigate the public transport system using a wheelchair.

When it is fully open over the next few years, it will add 545 beds to the healthcare system, the Health Ministry said.

Speaking at the soft opening, Senior Minister of State for Law and Health Edwin Tong said hospitals are seeing more frail patients who require a longer period of care.

Community hospitals, he added, play the important role of enabling patients to recover their functions and assist them to transit more easily from acute hospitals to home.

Patients at OCH can perform rehabilitation exercises at the hospital’s rooftop garden, where they can work on navigating different terrains such as stairs, slopes and rocky paths.

There are also simulated pedestrian crossings and interiors of a public bus and train to let patients practise getting in and out of public transport on a wheelchair.

At the hospital’s ground-breaking ceremony in 2015, Health Minister Gan Kim Yong had said that the Bukit Merah area, where the hospital is close to, has the second-highest number of residents aged 65 and above in Singapore.

The profile of patients visiting SGH is also getting older, he added. About 40 per cent or 32,000 of SGH’s inpatient discharges involve patients aged 65 and above.

Mr Tong said that in the early years, when the population was younger and inpatient hospitalisation was often episodic and short, the Government concentrated its efforts in building acute hospitals.

But as the population ages, the Government is responding by building community hospitals to meet changing healthcare needs.

SingHealth Community Hospitals chief executive Margaret Lee said that OCH’s close proximity to SGH can help members of its care team familiarise themselves with incoming patients’ conditions.

“Our care team has the advantage of meeting with incoming patients first at the SGH wards… This lets us plan their care plans early for a seamless transition and a quicker recovery,” she said.

Doctors from SGH can also review their patients admitted in OCH if necessary, she added.

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