Learning from elsewhere: Integrated care development in Singapore

The Singapore healthcare sector faces a myriad of challenges, including a rapidly ageing population, an increasing burden of chronic disease, and the rising cost of healthcare. The Ministry of Health has called for a restructuring and transformation of the current model of care to one that is more accessible, affordable and of higher quality, by the year 2020. In achieving quality health care, care integration through the Regional Health Systems (RHS) is seen as one approach to improving health and social outcomes, increasing healthcare utilisation and increasing satisfaction with healthcare providers. We conducted a qualitative study involving 31 elites from five policy agent clusters, and analysed organisational documents, to explore how the concepts of policy transfer and policy translation, explain the ways in which integrated care was introduced and developed in Singapore, with a focus on the SingHealth (SGH Campus) Regional Health System (RHS). The findings demonstrate that the development of integrated care is mediated by multi-scalar and multi-site networks and contextual features. The multiple and pluralistic interpretations of ‘integrated care’ and ‘policy’ are contested spaces or domains requiring further negotiation and debate. Institutional issues in the SingHealth (SGH Campus) RHS, and in the private and ILTC sectors highlight the need to consider spatial and temporal factors, and the multiplexities in the embedding of integrated care policy.