MOH’s Kenneth Mak: Catching up with hospital backlog could take months 

Singapore — The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a considerable backlog in the country’s hospital system, which may take months to catch up with, said the Director of Medical Services at the Ministry of Health, Kenneth Mak, on Thursday (Oct 7).

There were 1,520 Covid-19 patients confined in hospitals all over Singapore as of Wednesday (Oct 6).

The pandemic has caused many patients to put off elective surgeries and even follow-up visits with doctors.

Associate Professor Mak said at a panel discussion at the Singapore Health & Biomedical Congress that similar to what happened during last year’s Circuit Breaker, some people with chronic medical conditions have not been able to go to follow-up visits to their doctors.

He acknowledged that doctors have been very busy taking care of Covid-19 patients, and seeing to the medical concerns of others would take months, and is not something that can be settled “over weeks”.

CNA reports Prof Mak as saying doctors are doing their utmost to address the backlog, starting with cancer patients.

Teleconsultation has been the answer for many, although not for all. Moreover, there have been some patients who have suffered more during this time. 

”There will be a subgroup of patients who will come back with illnesses and diseases perhaps worse off, because they have not come back to hospitals for regular follow-ups,” he said, adding that it’s possible these patients either missed taking their medicine or did not refill their prescriptions.

He expects that they will be among those needing extra care as Singapore’s hospital’s catch-up with the backlog.

“We hope that this pool of people with conditions worsening is not big, but nonetheless, catching up will take months,” The Straits Times quotes him as saying.

“Even though we’ve prioritised those with urgent conditions and cancers, there are still a lot of patients who would have other conditions that require treatment in the hospital setting,” he added.

ST also reported that healthcare workers from other institutions have been tapped to tend to Covid patients at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, according to the group chief executive of the National Healthcare Group, Professor Philip Choo. /TISG

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