SINGAPORE – Alexandra Hospital (AH),which currently operates an urgent care centre that handles acute care cases but not ambulance emergency cases, will start receiving ambulance casesfrom Oct 1.

The move is part of the hospital’s efforts to ramp up its emergency response in preparation to have a fully functioning emergency department (ED) in 2028, when the hospital is redeveloped into an integrated health campus. 

From Oct 1, Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) ambulances will be sending certain non-life threatening cases – such as chest pains, breathlessness, giddy spells, strokes, fractures, rashes and allergies – to the hospital if they are from the vicinity, said Dr Keith Ho, senior consultant emergency physician and head of AH’s urgent care centre. 

However, if a case turns out to be a life-threatening one, the hospital and the ED team will still be able to handle it, said Dr Ho. 

This initiative at AH is part of a broader national effort to balance the loads at EDs here and shorten wait times of emergency services in Singapore.

S i ngapore is facing growing healthcare demand as the population ages, with emergency medical services experiencing a significant increase in demand .

In 2024, the SCDF responded to over 245,000 calls made to the emergency hotline 995, averaging 672 a day – a 57 per cent increase from 2014.

AH will by 2028 accept all emergency cases, including complex and life-threatening ones.

“We are staffed by emergency medicine specialists and nurses with specialised emergency training, so we can provide emergency services. But in the back end, we do not have a 24/7 emergency operating theatre to support surgical emergencies and the staff for that on standby. Hence, we are not yet a fully functioning ED,” said Dr Ho .

Its pool of ED doctors work in both AH and the National University Hospital. These hospitals are under the National University Health System cluster.

Dr Ho said that typically, at any one time, there are one to two ED specialists and three to five junior doctors on duty.

AH has not received emergency ambulance services for 10 years after its ED closed for renovations in 2015. It subsequently opened as an acute care clinic. Generally, the hospital’s urgent care centre , which operates round the clock , gets about 2,000 patients a month, which works out to 60 to 70 patients a day. 

  AH is expecting 10 to 15 ambulance cases a day on weekdays .

AH said the average wait time at its urgent care centre is unlikely be to significantly affected by the additional cases. The average wait time is about one hour to two hours during non-peak hours and more than two hours during peak hours, for instance, at the start of the week or in the mornings.

Currently, patients can access AH’s urgent care centre  through private ambulances, referrals from polyclinics and general practitioners, or as walk-ins. Charges at the centre start from $145.75.

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