Tag Archives: SGH

SGH Clinic A Payment

It is Friday and the SGH ENT Clinic is packed with patients. The current bottleneck process is the payment and appointment counter. You will have to patiently wait for your turn. This may take 30 minutes to one hour.

Everyone is trying to pay attention to the staffs calling the patient to make payment and fix the next appointment. I am wondering when this process can be change or there is limitation in their work flow. My advice is to apply for the service express and skip the payment and appointment counter.

Apply for Service Express>>>

SGH Car Park H

Car Park H open or covered car park offers the most economical solution to your parking needs. You can drop the patient or your love ones before proceeding to the car park.

The car park charges is $1.08 per hour. The others normal car park charge is at $2.16 per hour. Therefore you save 50% of your money.

The open car park H to Block 5 is the nearest where the walking time is 10mins or less for a healthy adult. You need to add 5 more mins of walking time for covered car park H.

SGH ENT Clinic Patient Experience

Registration using the automated registration machine is fast and convenient. You can scan your IC/ID card and it will generated the slip if you have a schedule appointment. The slip will show you the clinic and room to proceed for your consultant review.

Of course, seeing the consultant still take some ample waiting time. I see this is a major improvement as you can skip the registration counter.

But now the lag is at the payment and appointment counter. Just imagine, there are at least 20 consultant rooms but only 2 staffs to serve your payment and appointment needs. You need to wait at least 30 minutes on a normal day for them to serve you. It can be quite frustrating as they use a very manual method and that is by calling name instead of utilizing the queue number.

It is time SGH looks at how NHG Polyclinic is resolving this issue. At the poly clinic, you can proceed to made payment using the automated counter or back at home using AXS or internet banking. You can then queue at the appointment counter to book your appointment.

We should learn and adopt best practices in the healthcare sector for the benefits of the patients. There is no need to re-invent the wheel but sharing among each other to improve the services together.

I will email SGH and let’s see what is their comment on the payment and appointment counter issue.

Subsidy Patient in distress

I bought my mother to Singapore General Hospital Clinic A (ENT) for a specialist follow up on her Thyroid. She will need an operation after they had seen her CT scan on the neck.

I saw a old male patient in around 50s in distress and need to see a specialist. He had an appointment to see the specialist but only in Jan 2017. But he obviously know what type of medical attention is require and insist on seeing a doctor and do not mind waiting till 6PM onwards.

The operations staff advised that he cannot see a specialist without an appointment. He need to go A&E if medical attention is require.  But he does not want as he cannot afford the charges of $125.

The operations staff had update that none of the specialist was able to help him. He mention that there are so many specialists in the clinic and nobody can help him on a 5 mins procedure which he had done before. It is indeed sad that the healthcare system is rigid and nobody can assist him.

A patient associate assure him that the charges will be waive if he go over to the A&E with the operations staffs. With the assurance,  he left the clinic towards the next destination.

We may not have the medical attention required just like him if we do not have enough money. Staffs may be eager to help him but still have to abide by the rules and procedures. In Singapore,  this is the hard truth and unless you know the channels that can help. We really had to work till death to continue surviving. What are your views?