How important is the role of the private sector in the provision of healthcare services in Singapore?
The private sector plays a very big role in the healthcare sector in Singapore. 80% of the clinics in Singapore are private clinics, while the remaining 20% are government owned, such as polyclinics.
The private sector has a very important role of providing healthcare services because of their vast numbers in neighbourhood areas. Situated at these acessible areas, the private clinics tent to those with common illneses such as a flu or a fever. In the case of government owned public clinics, the costs of the treatment are lower than those of the private clinics as the medical fee can be further subsidized by the health policies such as Medishield. The negative point is that many people want the low costing treatment, and as a result it takes a much longer period for one to get treated in a polyclinic as compared to the time taken in a private clinic that has less patients. As a result, patients have to queue for hours before getting treated, perhaps causing their conditions to worsen as they are not given immediate care.
However this is different in the propotion of the hostipals in Singapore. In contrast, 80% of the hospitals in Singapore are government owned while the remaining hospitals are private. Patients will prefer to go to the public hospitals as they get subsidies in their medical fees while they will not get this benefit in the private hospitals. Private hospitals are not necessarily cheaper than private hospitals as a normal delivery in the KK hospital will cost $3061 while a similar delivery in the East Shore hospital would cost $2936 though the charges in the public hospitals will be subsidized. Some of the private hospitals also do not have many essential departments such as the Accident & Emergency department (A&E) making it less 'attractive' for patients to stay in there as they can get cheaper medicals fees and will be assured of treatment, regardless of their ailments.
Both the private sector and public sector of the healthcare services in Singapore are highly essential as both attend to a large variation of patients. Thus the private sector in the healthcare services in Singapore are as important as the public sector as both sectors tend to the different groups of patients with different needs.
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