Medisave and MediShield Schemes for Home Palliative Care and Home Nursing Services

Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Health whether the Medisave and MediShield schemes can be extended to home palliative care and home nursing services.

Mr Gan Kim Yong: The Government provides subsidies of up to 75% for lower and middle income patients who require home palliative and home nursing services. Patients can also use cash payouts from ElderShield to further defray the cost of such services. For home palliative care, we have allowed the use of Medisave funds since 2010.

MediShield is designed as a basic insurance scheme for catastrophic hospitalisation expenses to keep premium affordable. It is therefore not able to cover home-based services.

We are also extending Medifund to such home-based services from April 2012, to ensure needy patients can get additional financial assistance beyond the subsidy that they are receiving. The voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs) that provide home-based services also provide additional financial help for their patients, if necessary.

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We will continue to review Government subsidies and the use of ElderShield and Medisave to ensure affordability of such home-based services for the elderly, while balancing against the adequacy of Medisave and the impact on ElderShield premiums.