Home Care and Nursing Agency Websites: Licences and Enquiries

Which licences apply to home care in Singapore

Many agencies assume home care needs an HCSA licence. As of October 2026, it depends on what you provide. MOH's HCSA overview lists 16 licensable healthcare services, including Outpatient Medical Service and Nursing Home Service. It explains that nursing services, allied health and complementary medicine are potentially within the Act's scope, but MOH is not licensing them at the moment. Those professionals remain regulated through their own professional Acts.

MOH's overview also notes that a doctor offering home medical services in a personal capacity needs their own HCSA licence. If your agency arranges doctor home visits, find out whose licence covers them before you advertise the service.

Presenting nurses and caregivers accurately

Under the Nurses and Midwives Act, a person must be registered or enrolled with the Singapore Nursing Board and hold a valid practising certificate to practise nursing; practising without one is an offence. Families can check a nurse on SNB's online register, so your website should match it.

If you also provide doctor home visits under an HCSA licence, the Healthcare Services (Advertisement) Regulations apply to that service; see the next section.

Claims and advertising: keep it factual

Even where HCSA does not apply, the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act and general advertising standards expect claims to be true. For any HCSA-licensed service you offer, the Healthcare Services (Advertisement) Regulations 2021 set specific limits, and they make a sensible standard for the whole site.

Regulation 5 of the advertising regulations requires information to be factual and capable of being substantiated, and bans laudatory statements, superlatives and before-and-after images for licensed services. Regulation 14 restricts reviews and endorsements to limited settings, such as within the licensee's premises. Our clinic advertising rules guide explains these in more detail.

Enquiry forms that do not over-collect

Families often want to explain everything at once: diagnoses, medications, the NRIC from the hospital letter. Your form should not ask for that. Collect enough to call back, then gather care details through a proper assessment.

1. 1

   Ask for the minimum

   Name of the person enquiring, phone or email, preferred contact time, area, and the type of help needed from a short list (nursing, personal care, respite, not sure).

2. 2

   Do not ask for NRIC

   The PDPC's NRIC guidelines say organisations are generally not allowed to collect NRIC numbers unless the law requires it or it is needed to verify identity to a high degree. A first enquiry needs neither.

3. 3

   Keep medical detail for the assessment

   Use a free-text box with a note asking families not to include diagnoses or medication lists yet. Take those during the care assessment, recorded in your care system.

4. 4

   Send enquiries to a business system, not a personal inbox

   Route form submissions to a shared business mailbox or CRM with MFA, not a staff member's personal Gmail or WhatsApp.

5. 5

   Reply quickly and consistently

   An automatic acknowledgement with the next step and a call-back within business hours builds trust and reduces repeat enquiries.

6. 6

   Show your privacy notice next to the form

   Say what you collect, why, who sees it and how long you keep it.

Our guides on NRIC collection rules and automating enquiry follow-up cover both halves of this in detail.

Family portal access and care updates

Some agencies want a family portal for visit notes, schedules and invoices. That is useful, but it turns your website into a system holding health information about vulnerable people.

• Use an established care management or scheduling platform with family access, rather than a custom page on the marketing website.
• Give each family member their own login with MFA; never share one login across a family.
• Let the client or their authorised representative decide which family members see what.
• Remove access promptly when a service ends or a family contact changes.
• Keep care notes out of WhatsApp groups where they cannot be controlled or deleted.

Senior-friendly design: WCAG basics

Visitors include older clients themselves and family members reading on a phone. The WCAG 2.2 quick reference sets measurable targets worth meeting.

Test the site on an older phone with the text size turned up, and ask an older relative to book an enquiry without help.

Do it yourself or get help?

A simple, factual site with a short enquiry form is a reasonable DIY project on a modern website builder. Get help when you need forms that route to a CRM, automated replies, or a privacy set-up that families and partner hospitals will trust. This page is general information, not legal advice.

Our Business Website (S$1,490) builds a fast, accessible site with a contact form and WhatsApp button. Workflow Automation (S$390 per workflow) sends enquiries to your CRM with an automatic acknowledgement. The PDPA Compliance Pack (S$690) covers the privacy notice, data retention and staff rules for client information.