23 July 2019 - Changi General Hospital (CGH) has launched a refreshed GPFirst public education campaign on 23 July 2019 to further encourage members of the public to visit their General Practitioners (GPs) for non-emergency medical conditions.
Started as a pilot in 2014, GPFirst is an initiative led by CGH to encourage patients to see a network of 205 GP partners as the primary physician to address the number of non-emergency self-referrals to the A&E department. The pilot project led to a reduction in non-emergency attendances at CGH. However, data from CGH’s Accident and Emergency Department (A&E) showed that between January 2017 and December 2017, more than 45 percent of A&E non-emergency cases were patients between 20 to 45 years old, who had visited the A&E for conditions that could have been managed by GPs in the primary care setting.