Each nursing home will house up to 250 beds and will cost the Ministry of Health (MOH) about $25 million to build and fit out.

The three Voluntary Welfare Organisations (VWOs) which will get new homes are: Bright Hill Evergreen Home which will move to Punggol, Singapore Christian Home to Sembawang and Villa Francis Home to Yishun.

The exact locations of the sites are still being finalised and will be announced in due course. The new locations will also make it more convenient for the families to visit the patients.

Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan announced full funding for the new nursing homes at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the three VWOs on Thursday afternoon.

The homes will remain independently managed and operated by the VWOs. Mr Khaw said unlike previous arrangement whereby the VWOs have to fund part of the capital cost, MOH will provide full capital funding.

This will ease the financial burden on the VWOs and allow them to concentrate on caring for their patients who will continue to be heavily subsidised by MOH based on existing means-testing framework.

The three existing homes are small, with a total bed capacity of 322 beds. The rebuilding programme will more than double their capacity, and add an additional 400 beds to our nursing home capacity of 9,200 beds.

'This will keep our supply in pace with expected rise in demand as our population ages further,' said Mr Khaw. He said MOH is committed to ramp up total nursing homes capacity to 14,000 beds by 2020.

The collaboration is integral to MOH's plan to comprehensively upgrade the nursing home sector in terms of manpower planning, training, professional development as well as optimising operations through shared services and subscribing to good standards of care.