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Old coots like The Hobbit will remember After another major disease outbreak, senior folks the science fiction movies and TV shows in are given medals for convincing the public there were the sixties and seventies that seem to make no major screw-ups on their part in the first place predictions of what will happen into the future. Examples include Space 1999 and Space Odyssey DRUG INDUSTRY
2001 and Space Odyssey 2010. The first example is In 2018 Viagra goes generic and Power-5 Walnut about storing a lot of nuclear waste on the moon (not Power-1; by 2018 we are already at version 5) which exploded and sent the moon out of Earth’s orbit. The whole TV series was simply a worst-case scenario of mooncake-induced gas coming through from our medical schools, male drug reps become and frankly, an orbit-less moon is an oxymoron. The second example is about a Honda MPV driven Bonus-ing for drugs reach 1,000% and doctors gaily by an English guy searching for the best Sri are still being suckered into buying more than they Lankan crab in 2001, while the last example is about how the Honda MPV ends up in geostationary orbit while still searching for the best crab after the same pRIVATE HOSpITALS
chappie kicks the bucket in 2008. Of course, we now All private hospitals will be owned by the same know that there are no mooncakes on the moon, (foreign?) party in Singapore. Price of clinic space and just as there is no chicken rice in Hainan and also rentals reach astronomical rates. Oops, this is not a no Singaporean beehoon in Singapore.
prophecy. Let me rephrase that again: Price of clinic The Hobbit will venture likewise and predict space and rentals reach *&^%$#@! astronomical rates. how Medicine will be like in 2018, with the same (Editor’s note – this is still not a prophecy.) A new record of a $100,000 quote for the removal of a breast lump is announced. More COMMUNICABLE DISEASE AND FOOD
importantly, the doctor is not overcharging because In 2018, new zoonotic diseases plague us. The flu The parking rate at private hospitals is only $3. pandemic is still not here and dammit, the antiviral For ten minutes. And you still can’t find parking. Come to think of it, you still can’t find parking in Luncheon meat is banned again after traces of the Singapore General Hospital either.
Mad Pig Disease is discovered. Bak-kut-teh shops pUBLIC HEALTHCARE AND CLUSTERING
are badly hit. Chick-kut-teh becomes the rage.
After the inability to extract efficiencies and synergies, S M A N e w s J u n e 2 0 0 8 V o l 4 0 ( 0 6 )
the two-tier, six-cluster model is abandoned in favour better than washing test-tubes. The better-endowed of an integrated two-cluster competitive model with ones even try selling imported beer at coffeeshops one in the west and one in the east in 2018. Expensive with the encouragement of our ministers. American management consultants are brought in to extract synergies of clustering.
pRIMARY CARE
Woodbridge still feels lost and out of all this The middle-class Singaporeans continue their clustering business. Come to think of it, taxi drivers migration to the superbly furnished polyclinics are still lost in 2018 when a passenger wants to go while the poor patients who pass means-testing end to “Buangkok Green Medical Campus”.
up with their subsidies seeing the GPs in 2018. Two new national specialty centres are created: Meanwhile, more aesthetic procedures are MCC or Myopia Care Centre and IVF Centre. MCC regulated at clinics. GPs end up as medically trained launches a branding campaign to explain to HDB backups for beauticians giving aesthetic treatments heartlanders that MCC does not stand for “mung- at beauty spas “in case something goes wrong”.
Rental for GP clinics hits $40,000 for a 700 Population in the northwest reaches a million folks. And they still don’t have a hospital in the region.
Managed Care manages to convince HR managers Class B2 and Class C wards get air-conditioning to send their employees to designated telemedicine after the first staff dies of heatstroke while working clinics to cut costs. Only problem is these doctors in the wards due to the effects of global warming. are actually based in Johor Bahru. Reimbursement By then, means-testing is still not too mean and the bar of passing a means test rises slower than ERP charges. TRAINING
Waiting time for beds in A&E drops by a hefty Cost of basic medical training will go up and up. 10 minutes after two new public hospitals become Freshies will have to sign a five-year bond that hits a million bucks. The guys at the graduate medical The average age of heads of department is now school will pay $80,000 a year for their school fees. 35 as more and more senior specialists leave the But inflation is so bad in the 10 years preceding 2018 that $80,000 doesn’t seem so bad.
Publishing of bill sizes become meaningless Meanwhile, postgraduate training is still mucked as all hospital bills converge into one price because in miasma. The Minister for Health has turned blue trying to coax specialist training bodies to train more HEALTHCARE JOURNALISM
specialists while the specialist bodies increase the quota by one headcount per specialty.
In 2018, journalistic terrorism will be masquerading as investigative reporting on our little island with all sorts of inaccuracies. Opinion pieces like points a year with no change in outcome in the “MOH Should Ban Certain Practices” will appear quality of medicine being practised. The Hobbit as factual comments. The Ministry will issue joins the legendary ah-pek CME lunch club – and clarifications and denials but only after the same goes around eating free lunches at CME talks and newspapers have sold zillions of advertisements sleeping during the lectures afterwards. He gets 187 CME points in 2018 but refrains from recording Good news is, no one bothers to believe what the last 87 points because he doesn’t want to “spoil these journalists are writing in 2018. They only buy market” and give some guy any reason to raise the newspapers to see where the best deals are to be had THE SMA NEwS
FOREIGN TALENT
In 2018, The Editor is an old coot who writes Unable to eke a living as a GP and with more rambling editorial pieces occasionally. He yearns restrictions on aesthetic practices, GPs leave for the day when he can give it all up and return Singapore to set up practices in remote places to a quiet life as a doctor. He also fears for his life like Alice Springs, Australia and Fairbanks, Alaska and worries about the day when he may end up as a doctor posted to Pedra Branca because of all the Foreign talent based in Singapore actually now stay edgy stuff he has allowed into print on his watch. for a long time. The Biopolis food court flourishes (Editor’s note: This is also not a prophecy, especially with the critical mass attained. Some foreign talent the old coot and Pedra Branca bits.) researchers even become Chinese dumpling hawkers Most importantly, Hainanese chicken rice flavoured when they realise selling Chinese dumplings pays mooncakes appear on the market in 2018. n S M A N e w s J u n e 2 0 0 8 V o l 4 0 ( 0 6 )

Source: http://news.sma.org.sg/4006/Hobbit.pdf