Healthcare & Pharma Leading Expert Awards
Farrer Park Hospital (FPH), Singapore’s newest private healthcare service provider is an acute tertiary institution that represents innovation in hospital administration, incorporating the latest technology to support better decision making for better patient outcomes and shorter hospital stays.
The hospital, opened in March 2016, is sited within Singapore’s first, fully integrated healthcare and hospitality complex, called Connexion, which is Asia’s first, integrated lifestyle hub for healthcare and wellness.
Connexion houses the 220-bed Farrer Park Hospital with its more than 300-accredited specialists, 18 operating rooms, a 10-floor specialist Medical Center, along with a five-star hotel and spa.
The hospital is also a teaching site for undergraduate medical training, providing enhanced medical care, service quality and professional integrity coupled with value. Supported by approximately 600 hospital staff, specialists at Farrer Park Hospital provide a range of services, such as cardiology, oncology, orthopaedic surgery, gastroenterology and ophthalmology. A 24-hour emergency department provides for acute illnesses and the hospital has the most modern facilities for diagnostic imaging, nuclear medicine, radiotherapy and clinical laboratories.
A strong advocate for preventive care, the hospital also houses HealthConnexion, a new health screening and preventive medicine initiative which offers customizable comprehensive solutions beyond the usual health assessment where one can look forward to more in-depth health assessments, personalised dietary and fitness advice to wellness activities with link-minded individuals.
A hospital of the future
Farrer Park Hospital was designed and built to be a hospital of the future, combining innovation in medical care and medical education. Integrating healthcare and hospitality under a single building, the spatial planning is unique and could be considered one of the novel designed developments around the region.
We have created a medical destination where all medical consultations, treatment and accommodation needs are well taken care of and located within the same building.
To remain competitive, we focus on our core values of providing comfort, fairness and value for our stakeholders. In terms of value, we want to ensure that patients are offered the best care and service at a reasonable fee. An example of this would be when a foreign patient is arriving for a surgical treatment; they would be admitted to the inpatient suites where nursing care and medication administered. When the patient is recuperating well, they can be discharged and opt to stay at the hotel and visit the doctor for review until they are fit to return home. This would greatly reduce the cost for the patient, provide better rehabilitation space for patients to heal and enhances the convenience of their follow up consultations.
Farrer Park Hospital embraces technology and improves medical care through state-of-the-art equipment that facilities telemedicine consulting services across the world. To create a conducive environment for medical professionals, the hospital’s 18 operating rooms are linked via fiber-optic connections to various locations through the Connexion complex, including the hospital’s education center and lecture hall, teaching clinics and tutorial rooms as well as the hotel’s function rooms. Additionally, the hospital has state-of-the-art information technology which enables seamless and rapid flow of information between the admission services, inpatient areas, operating theaters, diagnostic and therapeutic centers, clinical laboratories and medical clinics.
Farrer Park Hospital is also the first private hospital to become a teaching site, with medical students from Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University. With a strong focus on education, service and clinical excellence, FPH will remain a strong contender for medical seekers in Singapore.
Innovation and stellar performance at Farrer Park Hospital
Farrer Park Hospital is voted the ‘Best New Hospital of the Year in Asia Pacific’ by Global Health & Travel awards, and has recently received 2 more awards from Asian Hospital Management Awards 2016 recognising innovation and branding. Within a short span of six months after its opening, the hospital has already garnered seven awards which recognise the innovative and technologically advanced facilities, and humanised designs within the hospital.
Exemplary display of Farrer Park’s disruptive innovation, FPH is the first and only hospital in Singapore to integrate its medical records with the electronic meal ordering system (EMOS). Acknowledged for its improvement to overall quality, safety and efficiency for patient meal orders. EMOS empowers patients to take charge of their meal selection through an interactive tablet in their suites. This unique system actively changes the way doctors, nutritionists and hospital kitchen communicate through the use of information technology and this cannot be realised without the strong IT infrastructure and a culture of innovation across the organisation.
Integrating patient’s medical records, only meals suitable for patient’s diet will be available for selection. This also allows food portions to be personalised through adjustments by our in-house nutritionist, under doctor’s instructions and specially prepared by five-star award winning hotel chefs. The system abolished the need for nurses to facilitate meal orders, saving 3 man hours each day (30 minutes per meal for 6 meals every day) and allowing them more time to care for patients.
Compared to manual meal ordering, the new electronic system reduces the meal order errors from average 8 per month to zero. The EMOS system also provides a cost saving of around SGD $88,000 per year and looks to break even in 4 years.
Another innovation is the usage of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for linen management. FPH is the first hospital to adopt RFID for outsourced linen management, which empowers users the ability for real time tracking based on quantity, category and location where linen is required. This information allows users to plan and manage linen in a just-in-time manner which eliminates the need for a large laundry facility, making way for more landscapes. The system also tracks wash count and this helps to maintain the linen quality for patients. The RFID technology has helped the hospital to save more than SGD $590,000 in 2015 and a potential savings of SGD $740,000 in 2016.
The official opening of Farrer Park provided an opportunity to design a media campaign with impactful branding as well as sustainable business growth. As a new hospital, with limited resource, we had to be very effective in our communications plan. Our strategy was to highlight the key points of our organisation, differentiating them against our competitors and then consistently communicate them across all channels.
The official opening was an opportunity to design a media campaign with impactful branding as well as sustainable business growth. Prior to the opening, selected media, business and community leaders were invited to experience first-hand the unique features of the hospital that helped generate opinions.
At the official opening we expanded the group of influencer and created a sensory journey through an experiential event right at the ballroom of the official opening. Guests were able to see and touch the mock-up inpatient suite exhibits and at the brunch reception, taste inpatient meals prepared by our award winning hotel chefs. Through vigorous staff training and engagement, pre-official opening, we shaped our very own brand ambassadors for the day to guide our guests through this unique sensory journey. Our core values of comfort, fairness and value formed the backbone of our campaign and our brand ambassadors were well versed in the consistency of messaging and experience impacting our guests. The successful media campaign brought a consistent increase in bed occupancy since the official opening.
The hospital currently sees a mixture of about 50% local and 50% foreign patients. Singap
ore’s medical tourism is still strong despite its high currency exchange against neighbouring countries and we are seeing an increasing number from the western countries as well. Foreign patients come from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, China and as far as USA. FPH is built to serve the local population with hopes of improving the services and providing value for patients. We have seen more than nearly 5,000 surgeries to date with less than 1% mortality rate.
Challenges for the future of Farrer Park Hospital
Our care philosophy extends beyond healing and the management of disease to engaging with our patients as partners in pursuit of good health and providing an oasis for healing and relaxation. Healing does not end after a successful operation. It is not just about coming to hospital for a procedure and then recuperating at home. It is about having the best and most comfortable services to get the patient on their feet.
In addition, having a family support structure close by, where relatives can stay close to the hospital is essential in the rehabilitation process. That is why, as part of Connexion, the hospital is Asia’s first, integrated lifestyle hub for healthcare and wellness that is linked to a five-star hotel and spa.
Patients are treated by an experienced team of medical and health specialists in an environment meticulously designed to maximise comfort and efficiency while promoting well-being, rest and recovery.
Throughout our facility, patients will find that attention has been given to every aspect and detail of our facility ‘ from the comfort of our patients, to its impact on the environment, to the speed and ease of obtaining medical attention and to the maintenance of hygiene.
Though small in size our culture of innovation, allows us to grasp opportunities quickly. The seamlessness of information flow was the focus at inception and the hospital was planned to be technologically relevant for the next 20 years. Being an institution built by healthcare practitioners has its advantages. We achieve painstaking perfection in our attention to detail. The hospital has many practical features that serve the needs of practitioners and patients while the hoteliers add details for comfort, luxury and aesthetics.
The architecture of Farrer Park Hospital and Connexion reflects the deep commitment to creating a true learning environment. Synergies between our hospital along with a closely linked hotel stimulate many innovations for improving the healthcare experience.
The concept of a hospital near a hotel is not new, however, to integrate it to the level that we have is something novel. We followed a biophilic architecture approach throughout the facility, incorporating nature and art to enhance healing. Hospitals are traditionally not the best place for recuperation. We strive to have the restful ambience of a hotel, in addition to proximity of doctors and family under the same roof, as well as using technology to enable seamless and speedy decision making; all this in support of better patient outcome and shorter stays.
You could say we are different in how we view private healthcare. A traditional hospital would not carve out 15 gardens at multiple levels throughout the facility so that patients and families can have places to feel the warmth of the sun and breathe fresh air whenever they like. The facility also hosts a private collection of over 700 commissioned Asian paintings meant to enhance the healing environment.
In land-scarce Singapore, a typical businessperson would not have fewer paid parking lots, making them one and a half times the size of a standard lot, to allow a patient on crutches to comfortably extend the car door fully to disembark. A standard project manager would not insist that contractors construct a curved sink so that surgeons will not have water dripping down his elbows after scrubbing his or her hands, or a bath bench with a cut out that allows patients to sit while washing themselves. This may seem unnecessary but these innovative approaches translate to actual benefits to people who ‘value’ them.
Everyone has the same end goal, a good experience and better patient outcome. Our strategy is simple. We take our responsibilities to patients, their families and the clinicians seriously. We attend to their needs, anticipate their wants, and find the best way to address these concerns through innovation and technology. This ultimately brings value to patients.
Our hospital is also supported by the medical centre which provides a range of specialty services, such as cardiology, oncology, orthopaedic surgery, gastroenterology and ophthalmology, along with a 24-hour emergency clinic, providing immediate care for acute illnesses. The hospital also has the most modern facilities for diagnostic imaging, nuclear medicine, radiotherapy and clinical laboratories. There is even a holistic service which focuses on screening, preventive medicine and lifestyle enhancement.
As we are still relatively new in the market, the focus would be to build up the brand of Farrer Park. The key is to build a culture of excellence and ensure that we have an able team to assist with pushing out quality healthcare services in tandem with our core values of comfort, fairness and value to our stakeholders.
With nurses being a major bulk of the workforce in Farrer Park Hospital, we believe in the continual improvement of clinical excellence and as such, FPH has since grown to be one of the top nursing training providers in both private and public healthcare in Singapore. To date, the hospital has organised more than 20 relevant courses with more than 210 course runs since Jan 2015 and these courses are approved by Singapore Nursing Board under the CPE events that allows the allocation of CPE points for the course attendees. Many of our nurses go beyond the required number of Continuing Professional Education (CPE) points, above the annual recommended points required for recertification.
Service excellence too holds its significance in ensuring the satisfaction of our stakeholders through the Farrer Park Experience. On top of their competency skills, all our employees are required to undergo service training which helped in ensuring that our guests receive a consistent, high quality service throughout their stay.
Comfort, fairness and value is encapsulated in every employee and Farrer Park Hospital aims to provide a five-star hospitality experience for our guests.
Company: Farrer Park Hospital Pte Ltd
Email: [email protected]
Web Address: www.farrerpark.com/hospital
Address: 1 Farrer Park Station Road
#02-01 Connexion, Singapore 217562
Telephone: +65 6363 1818
