Private cancer hospital to be built in Adam Road

Source : Straits Times – 2 Jun 2009

A NEW 24-hour private cancer centre is being built on the site of the now-vacant Adam Road Hospital, in a fresh vote of confidence in Singapore’s growing status as a medical hub.

The $42 million hospital will focus on cancers affecting the breast, lung and prostate.

Despite the downturn, Pacific Healthcare, a relatively new but fast-growing local specialist centre, is investing $23 million.

Putting up the rest of it is First Reit, a real estate investment trust specialising in health-care properties.

The hospital, to be up by early 2011, will have a team of four to five oncologists. The 30,000 sq ft facility will include 10 inpatient rooms, an operating theatre, and a laboratory for research and clinical trials.

Dr William Chong, chief executive officer of Pacific Healthcare Holdings, said it will rely on a mix of medical tourists and local patients – a strategy similar to that behind two other new private hospitals that will open in the next two years.

The new Farrer Park Hospital, built by Singapore HealthPartners, and the Novena Hospital, developed by the Parkway group, are expected to be completed on time, next year and in 2011 respectively.

The new three-storey hospital in Adam Road will be erected on the site of a former psychiatric hospital. It was acquired by First Reit in 2007, and has been left empty for the past two years.

Pacific Healthcare was formed in 2001 and was listed in 2005. It offers specialist services such as aesthetics, cardiology and psychiatry, at medical suites in Paragon and Wisma Atria in Orchard Road.

It has expanded in recent years, setting up specialist centres in China and India. Indonesia is next.

In Singapore, Pacific Healthcare currently runs a cancer centre in Paragon, which sees 40 to 50 patient visits in a week. This will remain as a satellite clinic, after the new hospital comes up in Adam Road.

The hospital will be run by US cancer specialist Steven Tucker. He was previously the director of the Prostate and Genito-urinary Oncology programme at The Angeles Clinic and Research Institute in California.

He joined Pacific Healthcare in August last year to head Pacific Cancer Centre at Paragon, after the US shareholders withdrew from his previous venture here, The West Clinic Singapore.

‘Cancer patients have enough to deal with already. It is dangerous for them to wait in line with people with coughs and colds and broken bones at the Accident and Emergency rooms, as often their immune systems are compromised from their treatments,’ he said, on the need for a 24-hour cancer centre.

The new hospital’s charges should not differ greatly from Pacific Cancer Centre’s current prices, said Dr Tucker. He added that they are similar or at most 10 per cent more than private rates at public hospitals.

Competition for the new hospital will also come from the Parkway Cancer Centre which offers similar services with a team of palliative care nurses manning a 24/7 hotline for families and patients.

Dr Khoo Kei Siong, deputy medical director of the Parkway Cancer Centre, believes there is enough room in the market for two private players.