Conditional Accreditation for Foreign Medical Specialists to Practise in Singapore

Dr Benedict Tan asked the Minister for Health in view of the acute shortage of doctors in certain specialities in our public hospitals and the opening of new public hospitals in the coming years, whether he will consider introducing a conditional specialist accreditation scheme that accredits foreign medical specialists to practice in Singapore, on the condition that they practice only in public hospitals and in specialties where we have an acute shortage.

The Minister of State for Health (Dr Lam Pin Min) (for the Minister for Health): Mdm Speaker, the Specialists Accreditation Board and the Singapore Medical Council already have such a scheme in place. Foreign medical specialists who are recruited by the public sector hospitals must first be accredited by the Specialists Accreditation Board before they are conditionally registered with the Singapore Medical Council.

Conditional registration requires such specialists to fulfil a supervision period in an approved institution. All the public hospitals are approved institutions to hire such specialists, and they can make use of this scheme to manage their medical manpower requirements. Majority of these specialists can be fully registered upon satisfactorily completing the conditions of their conditional registration. However, a small minority will have other restrictions or conditions imposed on their registration, and these will remain conditionally registered. This scheme is applicable to all specialties.

Dr Benedict Tan (Nominated Member): Mdm Speaker, I thank the Minister of State for the answer. Currently, we have a lot of new and large hospitals coming on stream and that requires manpower. There is also, at the same time, concurrently an outflow of doctors into the private sector. On the whole, we have a shortage of doctors in the public sector and I know of reputable doctors from overseas who have got a very public service ethos, who would be happy to work in Singapore. The problem is that even with their credibility and reputation, they have been denied accreditation in Singapore.

Therefore, I suggested this scheme whereby, unlike the current scheme, the doctors that are accredited to work in Singapore are limited only to the public sector, indefinitely. The current scheme I think allows the foreign doctors to go into the private sector after being supervised for two years in the public hospitals. Can the Minister of State elaborate on that?

Dr Lam Pin Min: I would like to thank the Member for the supplementary questions. I understand Dr Tan's concerns. There are certain specialties where the specialised training programmes are not standardised internationally, and the training quality as well as the duration of the training may vary between countries, thus making it very difficult to establish equivalence.

However, such applicants can practise as non-specialist doctors, for example, as staff physicians, and application for specialist accreditation can be re-assessed after a period of working in Singapore. For other substantive applications where a specialist training committee's support is strong, the specialist accreditation board can review the appeal on a case-by-case basis.

I would like to thank Dr Tan for the comments as well as the suggestions, and I would appreciate if Dr Tan can highlight any such cases worthy of consideration to the Ministry of Health, and we will be happy to look at them.

Dr Lim Wee Kiak: Thank you, Mdm Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister of State: in the last few years, what percentage of the foreign doctors who are registered in Singapore, subsequently, when they get their full accreditation, leave for private practice straightaway? And what is the percentage who stay within the public hospitals? Does the Minister of State have the information? Secondly, with regards to the recognition of foreign doctors, is there any bilateral agreement with the other countries that we have to recognise theirs and for them to recognise ours?

Dr Lam Pin Min: I would like to thank the Member for the supplementary questions. I do not have the figures at hand but I would like to highlight that there are currently about 4,500 specialist doctors registered with SMC, of which only about 5%, a very small percentage, are under conditional registration. Within this group, there are only about six in the private sector and the rest are in the public sector.

With regards to whether such foreign doctors do go out into the private sector after they have fulfilled the mandatory period of conditional registration, I believe we have the figure but I hope that the Member can file a separate Parliamentary Question (PQ) so that we can give him a more complete answer.