Sunday, March 29, 2009

Proposal for third medical school revived.

NTU and govt agencies in talks, as shortage of doctors grows more acute

By Amresh Gunasingham

The Straits Times Friday, March 27 2009 Page A4

SEVEN years after the idea was shelved, a proposal to set up a new medical school at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is being revivied.

NTU Provost Professor Bertil Anderson told The Straits Times that discussions are again under way with government agencies.

"It is need-driven," he said, explaining that the greying population and the need for medically trained researched would make Singapore's chronic doctor shortage even more acute in coming years.

[The demand for doctors is a derived demand for medical services. In this article, there is a rightward shift in the demand curve because of the change in age composition of the population in Singapore. As the number of elderly people increases, the demand for geriatric medical services rises. Furthermore, the Government’s policy to make Singapore a medical hub will also cause the demand for medical researchers and doctors to increase.]

The cost of setting up the school and how many doctors will be trained is still being worked out, he said.

The Straits Times also understands that a senior faculty member from the famous Swedish medical university Karolinska Instituition (KI) has been seconded to NTU as a special adviser on the project.

Back in 2002, an international panel reviewing medical education here urged the Government to set up a school at NTU to produce another 100 doctors a year.

While other suggestions were taken up, like upping intake at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and setting up the Duke-NUS Graduate medical school to create more doctor-researchers, the Health Ministry decided there was no immediate need for a new medical school.

Earlier this week, however, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said in Parliament that the Education and Health ministries (MOH) were working together to examine Singapore's medium and the long-term healthcare needs. One of the options being looked at is establishing another medical school in Singapore, he said.

Singapore aims to improve its doctor-to-patient ratio so that the healthcare system can match that of other developed countries like the United States. The public sector currently employs 4,300 doctors, but there is a need for up to 600 more to be trained locally.

[The supply curve of doctors is vertical because goods with quotas in production cannot change the quantity supplied. This means that the fluctuation in the price of the medical services provided will not affect the quantity supplied of doctors. However as the quantity supplied is curently much less than the quantity demanded at initial equilibrium, there is an acute shortage in doctors in Singapore. The shortage of doctors results in an inadequate quantity of medical services provided. This underproduction of merit goods (in this case, the services provided by doctors which are deemed socially desirable and under-consumed) will consequently cause the marginal social cost to be greater than the marginal private cost. This means that there will be an external marginal cost incurred which will cause a strain in consumer welfare and that the society welfare is not maximised. Hence, there will be negative externalities incurred in this situation. For example, some illnesses may not be treated in time due to the shortage of doctors available locally and individual health is compromised or even neglected. This results in a partial Market Failure!]

Measures like widening the net for foreign doctors by recognising more overseas medical schools have helped boost the number of doctors in the public sector by 39 per cent from 3,100 in 2004.

There are also plans to up intake at NUS from 260 to 300 in two years, while the Duke-NUS facilty, whose inaugural class of 26 graduates in 2011, has doubled its intake to 50 students each year.

However, all this will not be enough, particularly with two new public hospitals adding another 1,256 beds by 2015.

Dr Fatimah Lateef, an MP for Marine Parade GRC, who raised the issue in Parliament this week, said a new medical school would give young people more opportunities to take up medicine, and help groom future clinical researchers.

"There is a big gap between the number of applicants each year to NUS and the number of places available.

"If it does materialise, a new school would enhance Sinagpore's reputation as an education hub and is something a lot of people would welcome," she said.

Madam Halimah Yacob, chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Health, however, called for a careful evaluation before embarking on what will be a multi-million dollar endeavour.

[As such, government interference is needed for the correction of the market failure of the services provided by doctors in Singapore. Subsidies provided by the government to train more doctors locally will increase the supply of doctors. However this is a long-term measure which will take some time to see the effects on the market. A faster solution is to 'import' qualified doctors from overseas to boost the doctor-to-patient ratio in Singapore.]

"Do we need another medical school if the question to address is merely increasing the supply of doctors?"

"Or can we look at expanding the capacity of the present medical schools?"

NTU professors told The Straits Times that a medical school school at the university would be complemented by its strong engineering focus, allowing greater scope for research in the bioengineering field.

~ XinYi :)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009


"Economics is the only field in which two people can get a Nobel Prize for saying the opposite thing" is true, but is not strong enough. Better:

"Economics is the only field in which two people can share a Nobel Prize for saying opposing things." Specifically, Myrdal and Hayek shared one.


From http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html

This just shows how amazing economics is! To be able to be so flexible and allow freedom of thought for everyone!

-Leona