Number and Sufficiency of Patient Navigators Employed across Restructured Hospitals and Specialty Centres
Ministry of HealthSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns Dr Tan Wu Meng’s inquiry regarding the number of patient navigators, their ratio to patients with complex medical conditions, and provisions for additional manpower. Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong responded that as of end 2020, approximately 360 full-time equivalent staff held navigation roles across public hospitals and specialty centres. He noted that staffing ratios are determined by individual institutions based on workload and that navigation skills are integrated into nursing through the Skills Framework for Healthcare. Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong highlighted that 124 community nurses were deployed under a pilot project to support seniors. To address rising needs, navigation-related staff numbers grew by three percent annually between 2018 and 2020.
Transcript
7 Dr Tan Wu Meng asked the Minister for Health (a) how many patient navigators are currently employed across the restructured hospitals and specialty centres; (b) what is the ratio of patient navigators to patients on active follow-up and patients with complex medical conditions respectively; and (c) whether the Ministry will consider provisioning for additional patient navigator manpower and support given the ageing population and patients facing more complex co-morbidities.
Mr Gan Kim Yong: Patient navigators are staff who help patients steer through the healthcare system or find appropriate care options. Depending on the institution, they may also be referred to as care coordinators, case managers, service associates, or programme coordinators. In some instances, such work may also be undertaken directly by trained nurses. As at end 2020, there were around 360 staff with patient navigation roles, including trained nurses, across public acute hospitals and specialty centres on a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis.
Care coordination is one of the key domains under the Skills Framework for Healthcare (SFH) for nurses. This equips nurses with patient navigation skills to help coordinate healthcare staff to work collaboratively to deliver quality care to our patients. For example, the Community Nursing Pilot project led by our Regional Health Systems has developed the competencies and capacity of community nurses to support the healthcare needs of seniors in the community. As of end 2020, there were 124 community nurses under this pilot project.
As patient navigation can be performed by a combination of healthcare staff trained in care coordination, the ratios of staff to patients are determined by the respective institutions based on their workload and patients’ needs. Based on data from public acute hospitals and specialty centres, the number of staff with patient navigation roles has increased by three percent annually over the past three years (2018 to 2020).