NATIONAL HEALTHCARE GROUP STAFF BONUSES

Mr Low Thia Khiang asked the Minister for Health whether all the staff of the National Healthcare Group were given institution bonuses and how were the bonuses calculated.

Mr Lim Hng Kiang: Since clustering, NHG and SingHealth have been given the autonomy to manage their resources to maximise performance and minimise wastage. In line with this, they now have autonomy to decide on salary matters, including bonuses, using well-established market principles to reward performance.

NHG currently pays an institution bonus to incentivise all round performance of the individual institutions, besides paying individual performance bonuses and a cluster bonus. This is paid in the month of July to staff of institutions that showed improvement in a set of performance factors covering financial, operational, service, quality, care, teaching and research. The decision on institution bonus is taken at the cluster management level, and approved by the NHG Board Human Resource Committee. Since this is a performance-based bonus and not an entitlement, the actual payout will depend on whether and the extent to which an institution has improved in its performance. Nonetheless, all staff in an institution will receive the same quantum of payment when institution bonus is granted to the institution.