Becoming Healthier

Abstract

To meet the challenges of an ageing population, increasing chronic diseases, and rising healthcare costs, Singapore is embarking on a long-term, multi-year strategic reform to shift care to the community, to improve value for resources expended, and to make the prevention of diseases and complications the focus of the health and social care system. Healthier SG will launch in the middle of 2023 for those aged 60 and above.
 The reform will enlist, integrate and enhance the mostly-private primary care sector into primary care networks. Residents will enrol to a selected primary care provider for long-term care relationships based on individualised health plans incorporating primary and secondary preventive activities like lifestyle improvements, health screenings and vaccinations. Social prescribing to community partners will enhance the prevention of disease and complications. Corollary enablers will also be enhanced, from health and social information sharing, to manpower development, to financial incentives and support. Digital Health capabilities like the national patient information repositories and personal trackers will be part of the intended new health ecology.
 This presentation will describe the health and social care reform, its origins and drivers and currently intended plan and desired outcomes, and discuss its theory of change, implementational challenges and potential enablers and barriers for success. In particular, we will discuss the difficulties in the systematic measurement, monitoring and evaluation of a large-scale multi-year reform, and the governance and leadership challenges to maintaining coherence and shaping trajectories in such complex endeavours.