2025; three Malaysian hospitals and two Singapore screening centres
International admissions
11,600
2025, mainly from Indonesia; 11,200 in 2019
Colleagues in my remit
74
Marketing, international patient services and the Medan and Pekanbaru offices
Healthcare marketing borrows trust it has not yet earned. The patient decides to travel, to book a screening or to see a specialist on the strength of what we said, and only later meets the clinicians who must honour it. I therefore want every claim, price indication and payment arrangement around our hospitals to be something a doctor would sign and a patient could check.
I market a hospital group only with claims a travelling patient can check before booking, and I will not pay anyone more because a patient's bill grew larger.
I am group chief marketing officer of Serindah Healthcare Group, which runs three private hospitals in Penang, Melaka and Johor Bahru, two health-screening centres in Singapore and patient-information offices in Medan and Pekanbaru. The group reported S$452 million of revenue and S$74 million of EBITDA in 2025 and employs 5,300 people; about 390 independent consultant specialists hold admitting rights. I lead 74 colleagues through five direct reports and hold a marketing and patient-information budget of S$9.6 million for 2026. Clinical decisions, doctors' credentials and treatment pricing approval sit with the medical director, the hospital chief executives and finance.
I started in 1995 in the marketing office of a Singapore pharmacy chain, writing shelf cards for cough remedies and herbal tonics. A pharmacist once declined to recommend a product whose card I had written, because the claim went further than the evidence. That small refusal has shaped everything since: brand management for over-the-counter medicines, agency work for hospitals and drug companies, and fourteen years inside Serindah writing the explanations, estimates and guides that Indonesian and Malaysian patients use to decide whether to come to us.
The decisions on this site each cost us something visible. I removed patient-testimonial videos that were our most productive content in Indonesia. I ended commissions that paid facilitators a share of each patient's final bill, and admissions recovered more slowly after the border reopened. I took sales incentives off add-on screening tests, and revenue per screening visit fell. I describe the losses alongside the reasons, because a board should judge a marketing choice by both.
Commissions replaced by fixed service agreements
In 2019 facilitators earned five to eight per cent of the final hospital bill on 46 per cent of international admissions. From April 2022, 79 accredited facilitators work under fixed annual fees; 61 declined. International admissions reached 11,600 in 2025, against 11,200 in 2019.
Screening add-ons sold on clinical guidance, not counter incentives
Removing per-test staff incentives in 2023 cut add-on revenue per screening visit from S$96 to S$63 and total screening revenue by 4.1 per cent in 2024. Follow-up referrals after an isolated abnormal tumour-marker result fell from 410 to 140.
Thirty-four testimonial videos withdrawn
Social enquiries from Indonesia fell 22 per cent over the next two quarters of 2019. Forty-one procedure explainers reviewed by a medical panel replaced them, and we now publish twice-yearly survey results drawn from 6,400 patient responses.
Current focus
I am rebuilding how we present typical bill ranges for international patients so that the published figure, the written pre-admission estimate and the final invoice can be compared by the patient without needing our billing office to explain them.
Conversations I welcome
I would consider one non-executive role in a healthcare-services, consumer-health or aged-care company in Singapore or Malaysia, allowing about twenty days a year, subject to my chief executive's consent and a review of competing hospital and screening interests.
The leadership record
Trusted with consequential decisions.
Formation
Bachelor of Business Administration (marketing)Pelangi Bay University · 1995
Adrian came to me with the cost of ending facilitator commissions before anyone asked for it, and he reported the slower recovery to the board every half-year without softening it. That is why the board trusted the decision when admissions were still below plan.
Lucinda OoiGroup chief executive, Serindah Healthcare GroupThe full record ↗
Contact
I would consider one non-executive role in a healthcare-services, consumer-health or aged-care company in Singapore or Malaysia, allowing about twenty days a year, subject to my chief executive's consent and a review of competing hospital and screening interests.