Farrer Park hospital delayed

Source : Straits Times – 18 Sep 2009

A HOSPITAL-cum-hotel complex that was slated to open next year at Farrer Park has been delayed till the end of 2011, but this has resulted in lower costs for the developer and doctors who bought its medical suites.

Planning for Connexion started well before the financial crisis, resulting in high initial estimates for building costs.

However, piling work took longer than expected because it was being built above the Farrer Park MRT station.

The targeted completion date had to be pushed back, said Dr Maurice Choo, cardiologist and chairman of Singapore HealthPartners, which is behind the project.

Forty local doctors own half of the Singapore HealthPartners stakes, while the rest is owned by architect Lim-Tan Suat Hua, families linked to Malaysia’s Berjaya Group and little-known Indonesian firm Wharton Scott.

The $600 million project standing on a 1.36ha site in Race Course Road was initially scheduled to open in October next year.

Dr Choo said the delay resulted in construction costs coming down, and this lowered prices of the medical suites by a third.

‘If we had constructed in the pre-Lehman Brothers collapse environment, we were planning to sell our units at roughly 30 to 40 per cent higher than what we are selling now. We can sell them lower, because our cost is less now,’ said Dr Choo.

Lower costs of the suites will, in turn, mean lower patient fees, he added.

Nearly half of the 230 specialist medical units have been sold so far, at a price of about $3,000 to $3,500 per sq ft (psf) each.

This is lower than the average price a unit at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre at $4,500 psf: one of the factors which attracted doctors.

One of them is Dr Leslie Lam, a cardiologist with a private practice at Mount Elizabeth, who bought two units at Connexion.

He is excited about the doctor-driven project which, he says, puts patients’ needs first.

For example, patients will have a private lift and separate access to their wards and X-ray rooms and do not have to bump into hotel guests or visitors to the hospital.

Connexion’s six-storey podium and two 20-storey wings will house 220 hospital beds, 189 medical suites and a hotel with 230 rooms.

A hotel operator will manage the hotel separately from the hospital.

It will target recovering patients who do not need to stay in the hospital to recuperate but may need to make regular trips back. For foreign patients, this means savings on transport costs as well, said Dr Choo.