SINGAPORE: After a doctor shared on LinkedIn on Sunday (June 1) that a General Practitioner (GP) clinic in Tampines was being charged a monthly rental rate of more than S$52,000, many Singaporeans expressed their shock online, in keeping with growing dissatisfaction with rental rates across the city-state, as many feel they’ve become too expensive.
Since then, the story has unfolded further, with the company that won the rental bid explaining its side, telling CNA the high price it pays for rent will not be passed on to its patients by way of higher fees for consultations and medications.
Andrew Chim, the co-owner of I-Health Medical Holdings, was quoted in a Jun 4 (Wednesday) report as saying that “Rent is not commensurate with (consultation) fee. I can assure you that the total bill for different cases will be in range for other heartland clinics.”
Later that day, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung weighed in on the issue, writing in a Facebook post that he was “dismayed” by the rental bid, which is equivalent to S$1,000 per square meter.
“This must translate to higher cost of healthcare one way or another and negate the effort of Ministry of Health, Singapore (MOH) to try to keep the cost of primary healthcare affordable,” he wrote, adding, “More importantly, higher rental bids do not necessarily translate to the best healthcare that the community needs.”
He emphasised the growing importance of GPs in Singapore’s ageing society, highlighting their vital role in fostering the necessary trust between doctors and patients, as the latter are guided toward better health outcomes.
“He or she is the vital link to connect patients to acute hospital care, preventive community care, and social prescriptions,” he wrote.
Mr Ong added that in May, the Health Ministry and the Housing Development Board (HDB) launched a Price-Quality evaluation Model (PQM) at Bartley Beacon. In this new approach, the quality of care accounts for 70% of the tender evaluation, while rental makes up the remaining 30%. Although the Tampines clinic had been awarded before the new PQM, he said that it will become the norm for when tendering GP clinics in HDB heartlands.
On Thursday morning, however, the winning bid for the S$52,000 clinic at Tampines appeared to be defended by Ho Ching, the former CEO of Temasek.
In a Facebook post, Madam Ho, the wife of Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, wrote that the company that won the bid is “not a newbie” as it has won and lost bids in the past and has three other existing clinics.
“These are folks who have experience and know the operating costs,” she added, explaining that the company had assessed its bid as a long-term investment, building its clientele with families in a new estate that would remain loyal through the years.
“They even studied how many BTOs (build-to-orders) are coming up and what other developments are coming up before they bidded. They are not going into an established area where families already have existing old family GPs that they trust and go to as their family doctor,” wrote Mdm Ho, adding, “They expect to break even by about 18 months.” /TISG
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