Need To Be Hospitalised, But Can't Bear To Leave The Comfort Of Home? Check Into Raffles Hospital Then, Which Promises Hotel-Style Service...
The Raffles Hospital, which opened on March 31, aims to provide a level of service that is more like a hotel's than a health-care centre's, say the people behind it.
The immaculate livery of the smiling porters and patient relations officers is the first hint that something is up, if not upmarket.
Located on the site that was once Blanco Court, next to Bugis Junction, in North Bridge Road, the new Raffles Hospital actually retains the existing superstructure of the 19-year-old building.
With the decision to convert it into a hospital, the building had to be retrofitted and an additional wing added to make up over 540,000 sq ft of floor space spread over 13 floors. Four floors, from the third to the sixth, are carparks, with provision for 450 lots.
Dr Loo Choon Yong, 52, who is the executive chairman of Raffles Medical Group, which owns and runs the hospital, is known for his business acumen.
After all, this is a man who, over 25 years, built up Singapore's biggest private medical group practice of 60 outpatient clinics and a surgicentre, which specialises in minimally-invasive surgery that allows patients to be discharged with shorter hospital stays.
So it is no surprise when he discloses one of the reasons he picked Blanco Court for redevelopment - it did not come with air-conditioning, he says.
"If we had bought a newer building, we would have had to tear out the air-conditioning anyway, costing us more money."
Blanco Court was owned by Pidemco Land, now CapitalLand. The property giant retains a 50-per cent share of the hospital building, as a co-landlord.
LOOS CHANGE
The hospital eventually cost $200 million to build, though the details which Dr Loo seems most proud of are not the huge granite columns flanking the lobby or its cascading water feature.
Instead, he is more excited about the toilets in the wards, whose design he himself paid attention to.
Noting that patients tend to fall in the toilets, he and his staff of advisers came up with the novel solution of doing away with the low step in hospital ward toilets that is there to prevent overflow of water into the bedroom.
The step has been replaced by an imperceptible ramp instead - even though, as he says, not without some pride, 'the contractors kept saying it couldn't be done'.
On a different scale, he also thought about the circulation of human traffic in the hospital.
"Vertical transportation is always a problem," he says of the jam at the lift lobbies and inside the lifts one sees in private hospitals where there is a specialist wing, with a number of different clinics on every floor.
So, he made sure that as many outpatient consultation rooms as possible are located on the ground and second levels, which can be accessed by stairs or escalators that, as he points out, are quick people movers.
Other sensitive touches prevail as well.
The whole building has been organised around a central courtyard on the eighth floor, where the maternity ward is. It will have a pond and a bamboo and palm grove, 'for anxious fathers to pace in while waiting for their expectant wives to deliver', as Dr Loo tells it.
The corridors, which are 2.2-m wide, look into this courtyard, allowing in considerable natural light to flood the rooms.
"There is evidence that if you use the right light, colour and even music, you actually promote healing," the doctor-entrepreneur says.
A meditation room has also been included in the scheme, for families who need a space for quiet contemplation.
Art plays a role too. With $100,000 spent on art for the hospital, it even appears printed on the paper doilies used to serve food and drinks to the patients.
CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY
The hospital has also procured some of the latest hospital technology, including a multi-slice scanner which produces cross-sectional images of the human body at 1-mm intervals, which cost $2 million.
The current standard is apparently 5 mm.
But this is an investment that will ultimately go towards making the hospital a centre for heart disease and cancer.
The piling foundation allows for the future application of radiation oncology, using a machine called the linear accelerator which, because it emits high-impact electrons, requires the room where it is housed to have a 2-m-thick concrete wall all round it.
The foundation will also allow for the addition of three more floors to the building, when the hospital expands.
'We have 12 major operating theatres, but we can add three more. Likewise, we now have 20 intensive-care beds, but we can expect the number to go up to 30,' says Dr Loo.
SERVICE WITH A SMILE
A high standard of service, however, is expected to be its main distinguishing factor.
Likening it to a boutique hotel, Raffles Hospital general manager Lawrence Lim, 46, who was previously CEO of, first, Toa Payoh Hospital and then the Singapore General Hospital, says: 'A hospital is a hotel with medical services.'
It is not without a sense a irony then, that the hospital is just a short walk from that other famous institution bearing the same name.
'We don't mind the association with the hotel actually,' says Dr Loo with a smile.
As such, the bedrooms have been designed to give an atmosphere of soothing comfort. Warm honey tones of maple laminates line the walls, and each room comes with a writing desk and sofa bed.
Drips and tubes, the paraphernalia usually associated with hospital bedsides, are concealed neatly in the headrest when not required.
Of the 380 beds in the hospital, 60 per cent of these will be in single rooms, seeming to suggest the type of clientele that will choose this hospital.
One of the advantages of a hospital like the Raffles, Dr Loo says, is that it is more responsive. 'If you are a businessman from Indonesia, you won't need to wait.'
The ratio of patient to staff is expected to be as high as 1:2.
But, he is quick to add that the Raffles Hospital is not going to be just for 'the rich and famous'.
'Quietly,' he says, 'there are needy patients being treated for free.'
