MOH strengthens local healthcare core and redesigns care models for long-term sustainability: Dr Koh

Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) will continue strengthening the local core of its healthcare workforce while redesigning care models to ensure long-term sustainability, Parliament heard on 3 March 2026.

Responding to questions from Chua Chu Kang GRC MP Dr Choo Pei Ling, Senior Minister of State for Health Koh Poh Koon said ensuring an adequate healthcare workforce amid global competition and rising domestic demand remains a foremost priority.

Dr Choo had asked how Singapore is strengthening long-term workforce sustainability while maintaining care standards, and whether workforce planning assumptions are being reviewed to ensure resilience amid tightening regional labour markets.

Koh said MOH adopts a “multi-prong workforce strategy” to maintain sufficient manpower while safeguarding standards, adding that plans are regularly updated as circumstances change.

“Our focus continues to be to build up the local core of our healthcare workforce through diversifying training pathways, increasing local intakes for healthcare programmes and ensuring that job roles are attractive and salaries are competitive,” he said.

He added that Singapore brings in qualified foreign healthcare workers in areas of shortfall. To enhance resilience, the ministry diversifies sources of foreign recruitment and secures government-to-government bilateral manpower cooperation agreements with regional countries.

Koh also stressed continued investment in preventive health and right-siting patients to appropriate care settings as part of efforts to keep the healthcare system sustainable.

Redesigning care models for sustainable workloads

In a supplementary question, Dr Choo asked how care models and workforce structures are being redesigned so that productivity gains translate into more sustainable workloads.

She also sought clarification on how MOH is strengthening retention of experienced mid-career and senior professionals, whose institutional knowledge is critical to resilience.

In response, Koh said he would provide a more comprehensive overview in his upcoming Committee of Supply speech, but outlined key initiatives.

“We are shifting from more team-based care to a more shared-care model,” he said, explaining that this involves cross-training healthcare professionals in adjacent domains.

Under this approach, professionals can provide support to patients requiring lower-intensity care outside their primary area of expertise, reducing bottlenecks and distributing workloads more evenly.

“For example, in the allied health professions, a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist may share the same patient,” he said.

“They can actually provide some degree of support or guidance to a patient who needs adjacent sector of care, so that would not require an overburdening of another fellow professional.”

Koh added that care team transformation is also under way. One initiative involves moving away from the traditional model where a specialist is always the principal doctor in charge of a patient.

“We change the idea of a specialist being always the principal doctor in charge of a patient to having someone else who can coordinate the care other than a specialist, so that the workload can be better distributed and care is less fragmented,” he said.

Retention, welfare and workplace protection

Addressing retention of mid-career and senior professionals, Koh reiterated that competitive remuneration remains important.

“We look at making sure the salary is competitive across compared to other sectors so that there will be a good reason to retain them,” he said.

He added that enabling professionals to practise at the top of their licence is equally crucial.

“Through redesigning the job and making the career progression pathway a lot more seamless and more fluid, we allow these professionals to practise at the top of their licence so that they actually have satisfaction in their professional career,” he said.

Beyond remuneration and career progression, Koh highlighted workplace culture and welfare initiatives.

Each healthcare cluster has a chief welfare officer overseeing initiatives to support staff working in stressful conditions.

He added that systems are in place to prevent harassment and abuse in healthcare workplaces, with a zero-tolerance stance adopted.

“We also send a signal that we are protecting their workspaces and supporting them in the work that they do,” he said.

New career tracks and alignment with care transformation

On aligning workforce planning with broader healthcare transformation, Koh said new career tracks are being introduced.

In hospitals, a new category known as hospital clinicians has been created for doctors.

“These are paced similar to how a specialist would progress in hospital,” he said.

By doing so, MOH aims to open up additional pathways for doctors within hospital settings to pursue fulfilling careers outside the traditional specialist track.

In primary care, the ministry has announced plans to grow the pool of family medicine specialists by designating family medicine as a specialty.

This will enable more general practitioners to train at a higher level and deliver more complex care within the community.

Koh said this move aligns with Singapore’s broader push to shift appropriate care into community settings and ensure patients are right-sited.

No plans to turn foreign domestic workers into healthcare professionals 

Separately, Bishan–Toa Payoh GRC MP Cai Yinzhou asked whether Singapore is considering a professionalised track for foreign domestic workers specialising in palliative or geriatric care.

Cai noted that about 300,000 foreign domestic workers are employed in Singapore, many of whom care for seniors at home.

He also asked whether experienced foreign domestic workers could transition into roles within the community care sector, including as care staff or nurses.

In response, Koh confirmed that Singapore has no plans to turn foreign domestic workers into healthcare professionals in the formal sense.