Over at Singapore General Hospital, suitable patients may also be transferred from the emergency department and inpatient wards to Outram Community Hospital or Transitional Care Facilities for step-down care.
In addition, more elective inpatient surgeries are being done as day surgeries, said Associate Professor Lee Haur Yueh, acting chairman of Singapore General Hospital’s medicine division.
“Some patients are cared for in a short-stay ward where they are monitored for less than 24 hours after the surgery. This initiative helps to free up hospital beds for acute admissions from ED,” Assoc Prof Lee added.
“Rescheduling of elective care is only done after careful deliberation by the clinical team to ensure that the clinical condition of the patients safely allows for that.”
Patients at Sengkang General Hospital are discharged earlier at 11.30am instead of 1pm, which increases the number of beds available and reduces the long bed waiting time at the emergency department.
“For patients who might experience a longer wait time to be transferred to the ward, the specialty doctor from the inpatient team would have already started care management within the ED,” the hospital said.
Meanwhile, NUHS said that it is deploying surge capacity in its hospitals’ inpatient facilities such as the intensive care and isolation units.
The spokesperson for the healthcare cluster added that it is also working closely with MOH on contingency planning, including ensuring sufficient manpower and deferring non-urgent elective operations to maximise bed capacity for urgent cases in need of acute care.
“Where necessary, we are redeploying and increasing our manpower to better support high attendance at our EDs,” said the spokesperson.
“Our triage process includes having a senior emergency physician review the cases for admission to the hospital to ensure appropriate right-siting and avoid unnecessary admission.”
Some hospitals also highlighted that they already have measures in place to deal with the surge. For Tan Tock Seng Hospital, these include optimising extended facilities at their emergency department and wards, as well as arrangements with community partners to ensure continued care for the patients.
The hospital’s spokesperson said: “(Patients) needing immediate life-threatening intervention are treated first, while those with minor ailments would have to wait.”
For patients who are waiting for ward beds to be available, the hospital’s care teams will review and begin treatment at the emergency department itself so that specialist care starts early.
Likewise, Raffles Hospital said that it has established protocols for dealing with COVID-19.
“(We) are experienced in dealing with a situation where numbers (have) increased,” said the spokesperson.
“In line with protocols, we have been triaging patients during registration. We will prioritise and attend to patients who require urgent care.”
Apart from measures to manage patients, some of the hospitals CNA spoke to are also taking care of their staff.
The NUHS spokesperson said that initiatives have been rolled out since the start of COVID-19 to support the mental welfare of hospital staff. This includes resilience workgroups to strengthen their mental health and a well-being office that offers walk-in counselling services.
Tan Tock Seng Hospital also pointed out that its staff are “busier than usual” across its emergency department and all wards, and that support and well-being measures are in place to help them cope during this period.
“We are working hard to augment more staff to better support the current surge.”