Innovative features for patients

Singapore's next major hospital promises new features to make each patient's stay pleasant and hassle-free.

The S$1 billion Ng Teng Fong General Hospital will open in Jurong in 2014.

It will have an emergency department where patients are assessed by a nurse or doctor almost as soon as they register, The Straits Times reported.

Chief executive officer Foo Hee Jug has also promised that every patient will have a window view, with natural light helping in the healing process.

The 700-bed hospital and its adjoining 400-bed community hospital will be manned by the team that is now running Alexandra Hospital.

In the next two years, staff strength will have to double from the current 2,000 to 4,000, Mr Foo said.

Of these, 30 to 40 per cent will be foreigners.

The Ng Teng Fong General Hospital will combine the intensive care and high dependency units to offer more streamlined care, Channel NewsAsia (CNA) reported.

The combined facility will adopt a multi-professional team approach, involving critical care nurses, respiratory therapists, physiotherapists, critical care dieticians and pharmacists.

This will allow more flexibility and reduce the need for care team transfers. Intensive care patients whose condition has improved will be seamlessly managed as high dependency patients in the same room, cared for by the same team.

The emergency department is designed to be scalable so that it can accommodate an anticipated increase in patient load, CNA reported.

Instead of a central registration desk, the hospital will have kiosks and greeters as well as bedside registration to reduce bottlenecks.

Dr Quek Lit Sin, senior consultant and head of JurongHealth's Emergency Medicine Department, was quoted as saying: "Patients coming through the emergency department want to see a healthcare professional - be it a nurse or a physician.

"We try to put these healthcare professionals right upfront, meaning they will attend to the patient as quickly as possible, not making them register, not making them wait for the next step in the whole consultation process, but actually address their problems right from the beginning and try to allocate resources as quickly as possible for these patients, meaning they will get treatment as soon as possible."

The emergency department will also be equipped to handle any incidents involving hazardous materials on nearby Jurong Island.

Get The New Paper for more stories.