Thomson Medical hopes that lower prices at this hospital will encourage Singaporeans to cross over for their medical treatment, according to a report in the Straits Times (ST). It is just a five-minute drive from the Causeway.
The cradle-to-grave concept envisages a community hospital, a school for would-be doctors and nurses from Singapore with research facilities, a specialist centre, and residences for the elderly.
The ST report noted that Singaporeans had already started crossing over for health services with the opening of Parkway Health’s 300-bed Gleneagles Medini hospital and, therefore, this would not be new for them.
At 11ha, the project is a quarter the size of Singapore General Hospital’s 43ha Outram campus, according to the ST report.
The project is estimated to cost RM5 billion, with the general hospital and adjoining medical centre alone costing around RM1.3 billion, according to the ST report.
The report said a retail pharmacy was already operating at the site, having opened on Dec 10.
Work on the main hospital – designed to house up to 500 beds – is expected to begin next year. It is scheduled to be up and running by 2020. The entire project is expected to be fully complete – with medical school and housing for the elderly – in 10 years.
Thomson chairman Roy Quek told the ST he hoped the new facilities would help reduce the load on Singapore’s crowded hospitals and eventually add to the number of doctors and nurses familiar with the local healthcare landscape.
“I’m basically trying to build a private-sector version of the public healthcare clusters,” he told the ST, referring to the groups that run Singapore’s various general hospitals, polyclinics and other healthcare services.
Quek, a former deputy secretary of health policy at Singapore’s Ministry of Health said the Thomson group did not build the complex in Singapore due to limited land there.
Quek said treatment at its Johor Bharu hospital would be “very competitively priced” compared with Singapore, noting that products sold at the pharmacy were, on average, about 30 per cent cheaper than in Singapore.
Quek said they had signed an agreement with well-known Irish medical school University College Dublin, and were in talks with other universities to set up the medical school.
Its graduates would be mainly nurses and allied health professionals – although there would also be a handful of doctors – to meet Singapore’s most pressing needs, the ST reported.
The healthcare group is controlled by billionaire Peter Lim, who bought over the company in 2010.