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Following is a question by the Hon Chan Hak-kan and a written reply by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, in the Legislative Council today (December 3):
Question:
It has been reported that under the impact of global financial tsunami, quite a number of people who used to go to private medical institutions for treatment have turned to public medical institutions due to deteriorating financial situation, which will aggravate the imbalance in demand between the public and private medical services. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council whether:
(a) it knows the overall monthly occupancy rates of beds in public hospitals since September last year, and whether the occupancy rates of beds for September and October this year have risen when compared to those of the corresponding period last year;
(b) it knows the overall occupancy rate of beds in public hospitals forecast for next year; and
(c) it has any plan to allocate additional resources to cope with the shift in demand for services from the private medical sector to the public medical institutions; if so, of the details of the plan and the relevant amount of additional funds; if not, the reasons for that?
Reply:
President,
(a) The overall monthly occupancy rates of beds in public hospitals under the Hospital Authority (HA) since September last year are set out in the Annex. Data shows that the occupancy rates of beds for September and October this year have not risen significantly when compared to those of the corresponding period in the last year.
(b) With a growing and ageing population, HA envisages that the demand of healthcare services at public hospitals will continue to rise next year. In the coming year, HA will further strengthen the ambulatory and community healthcare services so to enable more patients to receive day-patient service. Therefore it is estimated that the overall occupancy rates of beds in the next year will be similar to that of this year.
(c) At present, only less than 10% of the in-patient services in Hong Kong (in terms of the number of bed days) are provided by the private healthcare sector. Therefore, our public healthcare services will not be seriously affected if some of the private patients change to use public healthcare services. The Government has pledged to increase the Government's recurrent expenditure on healthcare from the current 15% to 17% in 2011-12. Meanwhile, the Government is working out the funding arrangement for HA for next year. In the coming year, we will make use of the increased government funding for healthcare to strengthen existing services and to start implementing various service reforms. These include enhancing primary care, promoting public-private partnership in healthcare, enhancing support for the management of chronic diseases and strengthening community mental health services, etc. The implementation of these measures could help to enhance the overall service of the public healthcare system in Hong Kong and to cope with the increasing service needs of the public.
Ends/Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Issued at HKT 12:40
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