Monday, December 21, 2015

Nursing Homes: Bone headed MOH

This is one of those uncommon moments I happen to be able to evaluate our civil servants thinking.

I applaud the Salvation Army, Lien Foundation and Khoo Chwee Neo Foundation for having the gumption to revolutionize nursing home care here. Sadly this is not happening because the kiasu and kiasi folks at MOH want to play by their old book. They don't want to sell the latest and proven insight to their bosses and voters. These new concepts in nursing home care is completely superior over present models in effectiveness, satisfaction and life cycle costs. Such innovations in healthcare do not appear very often.

I am sold on Dr. Atul Gawande insights he shared on caring for the elderly sick in "Being Mortal".

MOH must be living under a rock. That book is a runaway best seller and PBS has turned it into a documentary as well. All of us and in my small circle which include my wife, brother and a few friends have read it. More people will be reading simply because the next change in Singapore's future is a movie starring mostly older folks!

I am not dissatisfied with the expert on health policies Dr. Jeremy Lim as well. He doesn't know enough to comment helpfully and so he hedged his statements with "superficially".

Well I have been getting increasingly unhappy with MOH. I am still ruing over why nobody is accountable for the fiasco of Hep C infections at SGH. We have created moral hazard in our health system. It is a matter of time something worse hits.

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