Therefore, DM, hypertension, hypercholestrolaemia and stroke are being opened up for management at community and primary health system settings. The intended benefits are aplenty.

• For the public, it convenience and supposedly better personalized services from the neighbourhood GPs. 
• For the policy makers, it help them better manage and redistribute the finite healthcare resources; especially the crowded hospitals. 
• For the GPs in particular, it’s an opportunity to better utilize their professional skills to manage more diverse case mixes instead of the common ailments they used to do; and certainly to reposition their professional services. 
• For the health services, it is triage of care to better utilize trained healthcare workers and redistribute their workload more equitably.

From the outset, the intention appears very logical, given that chronic diseases are manage long term problem with many follow-ups in the life time of the patients, who now live longer and consume more healthcare products and services. It is however an attitudinal transformation process which both the healthcare providers and the public have to embrace. Given a compact size for Singapore; coupled with the fiscal mechanism to use Medisave at community level, it is little wonder that MOH claims a favourable response since its introduction recently.

Such changes are indeed re-engineering of healthcare delivery channels. Diseases are now managed in a triage approach such that there is an effort to spread out the workloads; rather than allowing them to soak up precious but finite resources at the hospital settings, and thereby over-stretching and taxing the critical services disproportionately.

Community healthcare services, retail pharmacy included, should really capitalize on the heightened awareness and the rising tide of such opportunities.  In fact, it will similarly enhance the professional case mixes seen at the community pharmacy level; certainly pharmacists’ professional knowledge and skills can be better utilized and hopefully greater job prospects and satisfaction will follow in the wake.

On behalf of the 100th  PSS Council, I wish to take this opportunity to wish all a Happy & Prosperous Chinese New Year, ????.

Ng Cheng Tiang
President, PSS