NUHS: Dental centre will work with polyclinics to improve patient communication

We thank Mr Yap Peng Khoon for his feedback (“Disappointing experience at NUHS dental centre”, June 17).

The National University Centre for Oral Health, Singapore (NUCOHS) sees patients largely on an appointment basis.

NUCOHS attends to walk-in patients only if urgent or emergency care is needed. Such walk-in patients are triaged and given an estimated waiting time based on their condition and the number of patients that are already in the queue.

Patients are also attended to according to the urgency of the case.

As part of safe distancing and infection control measures implemented during the Covid-19 period, our clinics have put in place wider time intervals between patients.

This is to allow sufficient time for proper disinfection of the treatment area for the safety of our patients. This inevitably reduces the capacity and number of patients that NUCOHS can attend to each day.

During Mr Yap’s visit on June 9, there were several other patients that needed more urgent attention and the earliest estimated available time to see Mr Yap was at about 3pm on the same day.

However, Mr Yap declined and left the clinic in the morning. We subsequently contacted Mr Yap the next day (June 10) and provided another appointment date which he accepted. 

We thank Mr Yap for his suggestion of a phone-booking system. Patients are generally advised to contact us at 6772 4921 for a wait-time estimation before turning up, as there may be many other urgent cases waiting to be seen. 

We agree with Mr Yap that coordination with the polyclinics on patient referrals can be enhanced and will work closely with them to improve communication to the patients.

This is part of our commitment to deliver better oral health care to the community we serve.  

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