The new Jurong General Hospital will be a "green building", with state-of-the-art technology. It may also be as high as 20 storeys to give a panoramic view of the Jurong Lake district.
Lim Suet Wun, Head of Planning Committee, Jurong General Hospital, said: "With each hospital we intend to improve on what's been done. So we certainly expect this hospital - in terms of its facilities, how it looks like and its operational aspects - to be the most modern hospital that the government could built." Patients will have radio frequency tags which can provide their pulse rate and temperature automatically. This will be implemented at Tan Tock Seng Hospital in June.
The hospital will also be energy-efficient. Dr Lim continued: "It will have to integrate into its environment and certainly will have to have the convenience to make sure that we have links to all the adjacent buildings."
Dr Lim said it took his committee about eight months to conduct a feasibility study of the Jurong General Hospital. The 12-member committee comprises people who had experience in developing hospitals.
A model of the hospital will be unveiled in the later part of 2008.
The hospital, like all future facilities, will also have a community hospital next to it. This is to provide patients with step-down care, if needed.
The Changi and St Andrew's Hospitals, the first to pilot this arrangement, said such integration has led to greater synergy of resources and administrative work.
TK Udairam, Chief Executive Officer, Changi General Hospital, said: "We can schedule the patient to have surgery (or) therapy. Start here and then they continue in St Andrew's...
"Over time, if we can expand this, we can actually do the pathway so that it comes from CGH, goes to St Andrew's and even goes to step-down care."
Dr Loh Yik Hin, Chief Executive Officer, St Andrew's Community Hospital, said: "There has been greater efficiency because even in shared processes such as means testing, part of this can start during the inpatient stay at CGH and then we can complete the tail end of the means test."
"Being located next to CGH (Changi General Hospital) also helps us address some of the acute needs of our partner hospital. For instance, during the height of the acute bed crunch, we were able to let Changi General (Hospital) have 33 beds in one of our wards and this has gone quite some way in alleviating their bed crunch."
About 80 per cent of patients at St Andrew's hospital are referred to by CGH.
Structures like bridges will be built in the new Jurong General Hospital to connect the tertiary hospital to the community hospital, and also to other amenities in the area such as the MRT station and nearby shopping centres.
The Jurong General Hospital will be ready by 2015. - CNA/vm
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