New SGH emergency and national neuroscience building slashes stroke treatment times

SINGAPORE – Patients suffering from acute strokes can now be assessed, scanned, and treated in as little as 82 minutes, down from 130 minutes, at the newly opened Singapore General Hospital (SGH) Emergency and National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) building.

The 12-storey facility is designed to manage heavy patient volumes and complex medical crises and eliminate potentially severe hospital transit delays.

Officially opened by Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung on Oct 30, the 14,000 sq m facility is six times larger than its previous space in Block 1. This is the latest new development in the ongoing transformation of the SGH campus in Outram. It is purpose-built to consolidate emergency assessment, acute medical care and advanced neuroscience intervention into one space.

Ong said the co-location with NNI is by design, to provide a faster response to stroke patients, as a blocked blood vessel needs to be cleared within the “golden hour”.

Locating Singapore’s first emergency department-based angiography suite at the ED allows patients to undergo a life-saving intervention – endovascular thrombectomy – to reopen blocked blood vessels in the brain within minutes of diagnosis, without having to be transferred to the SGH main blocks, as they did in the past.

When it comes to stroke treatment, time is brain – every minute a blood vessel remains blocked, millions of brain cells die. Longer transit times increase the risk of permanent brain damage, severe disability and poorer long-term survival rates.

“The ED continues to be the front line of a healthcare institution and the bridge between what’s happening inside the hospital and the outside environment. The ED is that bridge,” Ong said.

If bed occupancy shoots up in the hospital wards and admissions slow down, the bottleneck is immediately felt in the ED.

“So, by looking at the ED, we can immediately gauge the health status of the community and the hospital.”

There are 10 triage rooms in the new SGH emergency department (ED), up from four in the old Block 1 facility. 

Beyond the ED which comprises 53 critical care area cubicles over two floors and 12 resuscitation rooms, the building also houses acute medical wards with over 150 short-stay beds, neuroscience specialist outpatient clinics, and advanced imaging, including MRI and interventional radiology.

One of the two critical care areas, with 29 cubicles, can be converted into a negative pressure area in case of a pandemic, said Dr Ivan Chua, the head and senior consultant, at the SGH’s department of Emergency Medicine.

Ong said that shortly after joining MOH, he learnt that the measure of whether an ED is running at full capacity is not whether the ambulance bays are filled, but whether the resuscitation rooms are filled. 

On an average day, the SGH ED sees over 300 patients, and typically, about 15% of patients need immediate attention and are given priority, Ong said.

When people go up to him to tell him that they had waited a few hours at the ED, Ong tells them that it’s a good thing because it means that their conditions are not serious. 

“I hope more people can appreciate that unique operational environment of (an) ED,” Ong said, as he sought the understanding of Singaporeans when longer waits are necessary.

With the new ED, spaces, workflows and teams have been brought together around the patient, said SGH CEO Tan Hiang Khoon. 

Nevertheless, managing pressure also means recognising that not everyone who comes to the ED requires emergency care, Ong said. 

With telehealth platforms and GPs providing alternative care, wait times over the last three years for 95% of serious but not life-threatening emergency cases at SGH have fallen from 217 minutes in 2023 to 141 minutes in 2025, he said.

As an example, the recent haze subsidy had helped to reduce ED visits, he added.