Singapore healthcare firms ailed by rising costs, but there are bright spots

AS SINGAPORE’S healthcare players leave the worst of the pandemic behind them, they appear beset by other pain points, from rising operating costs to slowing economic growth and a staff crunch in the city-state to boot.

While the lifting of mobility and border curbs since last year have seen the return of local as well as foreign patients, which are driving inpatient volumes and bed occupancy higher, the sting of rising costs threatens to be this year’s party poopers for the sector.

Joe Sim, the group chief operating officer of Asia’s largest private healthcare operator IHH Healthcare, said: “This year is about navigating the ‘new normal’ as we are now firmly in the post-Covid phase.”