Work starts on medical complex with hotel
230-room hotel will cater to foreign patients
By Salma Khalik
A PRIVATELY run medical complex in Farrer Park will be up by early 2013 - about two years later than planned.
Connexion, as it has been named, will comprise the 189 clinics of Farrer Medical Centre, the 220-bed Farrer Park Hospital and the 230-room hotel called One Farrer for foreign patients here for day treatment, their families and other guests.
The $800 million complex will sit atop the Farrer Park MRT station.
It is the baby of a group of doctors who want to set up their own outfit to break Parkway Group's near-stranglehold on private health-care here.
They are also eyeing a slice of the regional medical pie: Singapore expects to treat a million foreign patients a year by the middle of this decade, adding about $3 billion to the economy and creating 13,000 more jobs.
That the 40 doctors, who now have practices in Parkway's hospitals, see an opportunity is clear. It is what spurred each of them to put up $1 million each - three to four months' earnings - into Connexion.
But along the way, infighting landed the group in the courts and delayed work on Connexion.
Parkway is the biggest player in the foreign-patient market. The group, majority-owned by Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional, owns Mt Elizabeth Hospital, Gleneagles Hospital and Parkway East, with a fourth, 350-bed facility coming up in Novena in 2012.
Other than Raffles Hospital which hires its own doctors, the 'private' scene here is made up mainly of independent doctors using the facilities of the Parkway hospitals, the Mission-run Mount Alvernia and Thomson Medical Centre.
Some years back, Parkway's ties with some of its independent specialists hit a low when its hospitals set about monitoring standards. Things got worse when Parkway set up its own specialist services such as its eye centre, which its independent tenants saw as competition.
An attempt by two doctors to provide cheaper day-surgery facilities in Paragon and Camden folded last year, after bleeding to the tune of $2 million in two years.
The Farrer Park project also looked doomed when internal bickering over the running of the project descended into legal action that took nine months of litigation to untangle.
With the dust from that settled, only 22 doctors are left from the group of 40. With their two Indonesian partners, they bought out the other side.
'The schism was between those who want to practise and the others. We were not interested to sell and were finding every means to keep the project,' said cardiologist Maurice Choo, 60, who led the triumphant faction that wants to focus on practising.
Work on Connexion has begun, with the above-ground work expected to start next month.
Dr Choo said they plan to 'disrupt the market' with lower prices by doing more day surgery so patients do not need to spend a single night in hospital; in-patients will, however, be able to pick from suites, and single and four-bedded rooms.
Professor Euston Quah, head of economics at the Nanyang Technological University, thinks the group may just succeed. 'This independent hospital is going to put pressure on prices.'
Dr Francis Seow-Choen, a surgeon in private practice who is not in the group developing Connexion, expects a glut in clinic space. Novena Medical Centre is standing half empty, but this may change when Parkway's fourth hospital opens nearby.
Dr Lam Pin Min, who chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for Health, is more optimistic. 'If the projection for the number of medical tourists and its potential growth in the next five to 10 years is anything to go by, this private hospital will meet the anticipated increase in demand.'
Added Prof Quah: 'With more private hospitals and increasing competition, prices will come down...' This would be good for locals too, he said.
salma@sph.com.sg
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