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WHEN Madam Tan Cheng Yim started to run out of money, she stopped going to Clementi Polyclinic for diabetes treatment.
A nurse, who called the 58-year-old widow to find out why she had missed her appointment, persuaded her to come back. She told her the polyclinic could help pay her bills.
So, since January last year, the polyclinic has absorbed about $700 of the $844 she has chalked up so far.
The rest was paid from her own Medisave account, which had some funds in it accumulated from her previous job as a production operator. She was retrenched three years ago.
Madam Tan, who is widowed and has strained ties with her daughter and sisters, said: 'How to go to the polyclinic if I have no money? This really helps me a lot.'
The National Healthcare Group Polyclinics, which runs nine clinics including Clementi, expects to give $1.2 million to needy patients like Madam Tan by the end of its financial year in March.
This is larger than the $1 million it handed out the year before, and is three times more than in 2000, when it first offered assistance.
In the next financial year from April, it expects to give out eight to 10 per cent more, about $1.3 million.
So far, for the first three quarters of this financial year, it has already helped 7,328 patients, almost as many as last year's full-year tally of 7,421.
It expects to help five to six per cent more patients in the next financial year, as the population grows and ages.
The polyclinic wants to highlight that there is no need for patients to default on treatment. It has given the programme an official name - the Medicare Assistance Scheme - and will start raising funds for it.
Money for the scheme is carved out of the group's operating budget. This year, it hopes to supplement that amount through holding fundraising activities.
Read the full report in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.
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