Ong Ye Kung ‘dismayed’ at $52k bid to rent Tampines HDB clinic

As a chiropractor, I am glad that people are starting to talk about healthcare costs or at least healthcare costs in the future. Two days after my previous post about commercial rental of a chiropractic clinic in Singapore, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung claimed on his Facebook post to be dismayed about the $52k per month rental for a tampines clinic.

HDB’s commitment to having affordable and quality healthcare services

I am super heartened to hear that HDB is committed to having affordable and quality healthcare services. But, um, why did the the $52/month rental in the first place? And why was it allowed?

In the the health minster’s Facebook post, he mentioned the Price-Quality evaluation Model (PQM). According to the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) press release on 8 May 2025, this framework is in the pilot phase and will award HDB shops to General Practitioner (GP) clinics based on 30% proposed rent and 70% on other non-monetary factors.

He claimed that “quality of care” will account for 70% of the tender evaluation. Personally, I think that’s not true. If we want to talk about assessing the quality of care of a GP clinic, then the assessment should be based on the care provided by the GP right?

Well, this is not entirely the case.

Quality of the tender proposal is not quality of care

The Ministry of Health’s press release is very specific in that 70% will go into the scoring criteria for quality of tender. It does not go to quality of care as claimed by MP Ong Ye Kung. The assessment matrix will look at:

• Care models: e.g. whether the clinic offers multi-disciplinary care, and the range of services available for chronic disease management
• Manpower quality: e.g. whether the clinic team has undergone relevant training; and
• Operational plans: e.g. operating hours.

Based on this alone, it is clear that they are looking a multi-disciplinary clinic. Multi-disciplinary will mean multiple practitioners, that means solo-practitioners are automatically at a disadvantage under this scheme.

MOH is looking at longer operating hours. This inevitable means more complex operations and solo-practitioners would likely have more challenges scoring well for this.

Does that means the GP who does the regular, no-frills family clinic provide poorer quality of care? I don’t think so.

I get that healthcare needs are getting more complex. I also get that in order to take the strain of the public health system, it makes sense to bring multi-disciplinary, 24 hours, urgent care services to the heartlands. But, um, can we please also not discount the hard work of our dependable, withstand test-of-time, no exorbitant fee GPs?

Is dismayed a sign of empathy or disconnect with public policy?

I think dismayed is a strong word. It stirs up certain emotions. There is a sense of injustice. But does Minister Ong get to be dismayed?

Ong Ye Kung has been the health minister since 2021. Guess what? The PQM framework has been introduced by HDB since 2018 leh. So I am super triggered.

In his Facebook post, he used emotions to appeal to his readers. That’s not a problem for me. But it was suggested that he had been proactive at changing the healthcare landscape with the introduction for PQM, and that the Tampines unit fell through the cracks cos the tender awarded in Mar 2025, months before PQM was used for the Bartley Beacon GP clinic.

No, no, no, sir. The PQM has been around since 2018. If you are piloting it only now in May 2025, the right response should be an apology. Not dismay. Dismay suggests that you don’t know the public health policies enough. Assuming you do know the public policy, then the dismay is unwarranted and, quite frankly, manipulative.

What does uplifting all, not a few, Singaporeans mean?

I do think as a society we need to demand more from our ministers and government. I am not saying that we should not be appreciative of their good work but I think there needs to be more accountability. It shouldn’t take a LinkedIn post for such conversations to occur. When such conversations do occur, I think there should be more respect to the everyday people. The said respect should transcend above emotive language and have concrete commitment to what the people can expect in the future.

It’s ironic for the health minister to talk how “higher rental bids do not necessarily translate to the best healthcare that the community needs” yet not talk about the shortcomings of the current framework, why did it take so long for the tender evaluation to change, and no commitment to that such incidents would not happen again. Personally, I find it sad.

PM Wong in his National Day Rally talked about leaving no one behind (i.e., “uplift all Singaporeans“). He also mentioned about having a fair shot in life and can get ahead if they work hard.

Like I mentioned in my previous blog post, solo practitioners are not going to get a shot at HDB rentals at the current rental rate. Sure, we can have a PQM framework. But the PQM framework clearly favours large corporations that can excel in the current tender evaluation matrix.

Ho Ching, survival of the fittest is so 1960s

I don’t know how or why Ho Ching can have so much confidence in I-Health. Specifically, why she thinks clinic fees will be comparable to general GP rates when some Google reviews of I-Health clinic do suggest they are on the more expensive side.

Ho Ching’s confidence in I-Health is based on that Andrew Chim and team have experience. But, um, their rental for their three other clinics are between $7,000 and $10,000 per month. Suffice to say, they have no experience with a $52,000 rental. Also, if they are already having feedback that the fees are on the pricier side despite the much lower rent, how are they going to cope with $52k?

Of course Ho Ching goes on to talk about how the clinic “will find ways to earn more revenue by opening for longer hours”. Honestly, I am not sure if that is what PM Wong’s 4G government is about.

I don’t think people should be stressing about how to increase revenue to make rent for HDB. Yes, I get it’s a free market economy. I’ve already discussed that. But HDB should not be operating like a free market landlord. And clearly they did acknowledge this with their PQM framework that has been around since 2018.