FAMILY physicians are being enlisted as 'personal trainers' for patients with diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol.
In a six-month pilot project by public health-care group SingHealth, 30 doctors in private practice will each monitor five patients. They will set specific targets and help the patients meet them.
SingHealth, which runs three hospitals and nine polyclinics, will support the doctors with training on how to help the patients. The general practitioners (GPs) will be instructed on medical nutrition therapy and how to help the patients modify their behaviour.
SingHealth will provide the patients with counselling sessions by specialised nurses, who will advise them on exercise, diet and weight management. It will also provide subsidised packages that help monitor the patients' conditions. Diabetics, for example, will receive kits to check their blood glucose levels at home.
SingHealth hopes the project will help more patients improve and prevent their conditions from deteriorating into more serious illnesses such as heart disease and stroke.
About two in three diabetics in Singapore have poor control over their condition, as do more than half of those suffering from high blood pressure and high cholesterol, said Dr Daphne Khoo, Sing- Health's director of quality management.
This is often because patients lack understanding about the diseases, are unwilling to change their lifestyles or are concerned about the costs involved, said Dr Khoo, who oversees the project.
An earlier, similar programme by SingHealth's polyclinic arm showed that improved monitoring and counselling helped patients keep their ailments under better control.
Now, 77 per cent of 40,000 diabetic patients treated by SingHealth's nine polyclinics have their blood sugar under control, up from 65 per cent three years ago.
The proportion of their patients at high risk of suffering a stroke, heart attack or diabetes and yet had brought their cholesterol level under control has risen from 25 per cent three years ago to 45 per cent.
SingHealth hopes to help family physicians replicate the polyclinics' success. The private doctors see more of such patients with chronic diseases than all the hospitals and polyclinics but they may not have enough resources to deal with these patients on their own, Dr Khoo said.
SingHealth will launch the pilot project on Aug 20 at the Shangri-La Hotel as part of its wider 18-month awareness campaign, Delivering on Target.
huichieh@sph.com.sg