SINGAPORE \u2013 Patients experiencing an acute stroke can be assessed, scanned and treated in as little as 82 minutes, down from 130 minutes, at the newly opened Singapore General Hospital (SGH) Emergency and National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) building<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n The 12-storey facility is designed to manage heavy patient volumes and complex medical crises and eliminate potentially severe hospital transit delays caused by transfers between hospital buildings.<\/p>\n With emergency assessment, acute medical care and advanced neuroscience intervention brought together under one roof, stroke patients can receive treatment faster, without having to be transferred to the SGH main blocks.<\/p>\n Officially opened by Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung on Oct 30, the 14,000 sq m facility is six times larger than its previous space in Block 1. This is the latest development in the ongoing transformation of the SGH campus in Outram.<\/p>\n Ong said the co-location with NNI is by design, to provide a faster response to stroke patients, as a blocked blood vessel needs to be cleared within the \u201cgolden hour\u201d.<\/p>\n Locating Singapore\u2019s first emergency department-based angiography suite at the ED allows patients to undergo a life-saving intervention \u2013 endovascular thrombectomy \u2013\u00a0to reopen blocked blood vessels in the brain within minutes of diagnosis, without having to be transferred to the SGH main blocks, as was done in the past.<\/p>\n When it comes to stroke treatment, time is brain\u00a0\u2013 every minute a blood vessel remains blocked, millions of brain cells die. Longer transit times increase the risk of permanent brain damage, severe disability and poorer long-term survival rates.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ED continues to be the front line of a healthcare institution and the bridge between what\u2019s happening inside the hospital and the outside environment. The ED is that bridge,\u201d Ong said.<\/p>\n If bed occupancy shoots up in the hospital wards and admissions slow down, the bottleneck is immediately felt in the ED.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, by looking at the ED, we can immediately gauge the health status of the community and the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n There are 10 triage rooms in the new SGH emergency department (ED), up from four in the old Block 1 facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n Beyond the ED, which comprises 53 critical care area cubicles spread over two floors and 12 resuscitation rooms, the building also houses acute medical wards with over 150 short-stay beds, neuroscience specialist outpatient clinics, and advanced imaging facilities, including MRI and interventional radiology.<\/p>\n Ivan Chua, head and senior consultant of the department of emergency medicine at Singapore General Hospital, at the opening of the new building.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n One of the two critical care areas, with 29 cubicles, can be converted into a negative pressure area in case of a pandemic, said Ivan Chua, the head and senior consultant of SGH\u2019s Department of Emergency Medicine.<\/p>\n Ong said that shortly after joining the Ministry of Health, he learnt that the measure of whether an ED is running at full capacity is not whether the ambulance bays are filled, but whether the resuscitation rooms are filled.\u00a0<\/p>\n On an average day, the SGH ED sees over 300 patients, and, typically, about 15% require immediate attention and are given priority, Ong said.<\/p>\n When people tell him they waited a few hours in the ED, Ong replies that it is a good thing because it means that their conditions are not serious.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI hope more people can appreciate that unique operational environment of (an) ED,\u201d Ong said, as he sought the understanding of Singaporeans when longer waits are necessary.<\/p>\n With the new ED, spaces, workflows and teams have been brought together around the patient, said\u00a0SGH chief executive Tan Hiang Khoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nevertheless, managing pressure also means recognising that not everyone who comes to the ED requires emergency care, Ong said.\u00a0<\/p>\n With telehealth platforms and GPs providing alternative care, wait times over the last three years for 95% of serious but not life-threatening emergency cases at SGH have fallen from 217 minutes in 2023 to 141 minutes in 2025, he said.<\/p>\n As an example, the recent haze subsidy had helped to reduce ED visits, he added.<\/p>\n In the new building, NNI has a much bigger neuroscience clinic, where SGH physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists can operate side by side with NNI neurologists and nurses.\u00a0<\/p>\n This means care team discussions can happen quickly, while the patient can see the different therapists during the same visit, instead of having to make separate visits on different days, said Tushar Gosavi Divakar, deputy head of ambulatory services (Neuroscience Clinic@SGH) and a senior consultant at NNI.<\/p>\n The clinic also has a new infusion clinic that allows short intravenous infusions to treat Alzheimer\u2019s disease and migraine, as well as on-site lumbar punctures. Previously, patients had to be admitted to a short-stay ward or stay overnight, Tushar said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 Patients experiencing an acute stroke can be assessed, scanned and treated in as little as 82 minutes, down from 130 minutes, at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/96557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/picture><\/div>
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