Resilience of hospital facilities in Singapore’s healthcare industry: a pilot study

Singapore’s health-care infrastructure is suffering from increasing pressure due to population growth and a rapidly ageing population. This paper aims to assess the resilience of hospital facilities in Singapore’s health-care industry. The main attribute of resilience is adaptive capacity, which is also associated with vulnerability. Vulnerability is defined as the system’s susceptibility to threats that cause damage and affect its normal performance, while resilience is defined as the ability to anticipate and the capacity to change before a setback becomes obvious.

A questionnaire survey was adopted for the study, with respondents drawn randomly from both the health-care professionals as well as the public. The questionnaire survey results from 83 respondents, consisting of 31 health-care professionals and 52 members of the public, are analysed in this pilot study.

Ninety-one per cent of the respondents perceived bed shortage as an indication of vulnerability. The survey results showed that bed shortages, high bed-occupancy and long waiting hours were perceived as indications of vulnerability. The top three vulnerabilities identified were Singapore’s ageing population, the fast-growing population and the increasing trend of chronic diseases in its population. From the results, respondents appeared doubtful about the resilience of Singapore’s public hospitals. On a positive note, Singapore residents are still, relatively speaking, confident of the quality of Singapore’s health-care delivery system, which can be translated as one with relatively strong community resilience.

In conclusion, it appears fair to say that the public perceive hospital facilities in Singapore’s health-care industry to be reasonably resilient, but expect further improvements to ensure continuous delivery of quality health-care services.