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Following is a question by the Hon Leung Ka-lau and a written reply by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man, in the Legislative Council today (December 18):
Question:
Regarding the waiting time for specialist out-patient (SOP) services provided by public hospitals under the Hospital Authority between 2008-2009 and 2012-2013, whether the Government knows the following information (set out in table form):
(a) the respective waiting time of 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile for new case bookings for the relevant SOP services in various hospital clusters, broken down by specialty;
(b) the respective waiting time of 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile for new case bookings for the relevant SOP services in various public hospitals, broken down by specialty;
(c) the respective numbers of new cases handled by each doctor of the relevant SOP services per month on average in various public hospitals, broken down by specialty;
(d) the respective numbers of old cases handled by each doctor of the relevant SOP services per month on average in various public hospitals, broken down by specialty; and
(e) the respective waiting time of 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile for new case bookings for patients to receive medical examinations (i.e. computer tomography scan, ultrasound scan, mammography and magnetic resonance imaging) in various public hospitals, broken down by type of such medical examinations?
Reply:
President,
(a) and (b) The Hospital Authority (HA) has implemented a triage system for all newly referred specialist out-patient (SOP) cases to ensure that patients with urgent conditions requiring early intervention are treated with priority. Under the current triage system, new referral cases are usually first screened by a nurse and then by a specialist doctor of the relevant specialty for classification into priority 1 (urgent), priority 2 (semi-urgent) and routine categories. HA's target is to maintain the median waiting time for cases under priority 1 and priority 2 within two weeks and eight weeks respectively. HA has all along been able to meet the target. Moreover, clinics for the same specialty within the same cluster will co-ordinate their provision of services, the waiting time for SOP services is thus reported on a cluster basis. In general, the waiting time is statistically listed out in lower quartile (25th percentile), median (50th percentile), upper quartile (75th percentile) and the longest waiting time (90th percentile) to represent the overall distribution.
The distribution of the relevant statistics of waiting time of SOP new cases triaged as priority 1, priority 2 and routine cases in each cluster from 2008-09 to 2012-13 is given in Annex 1.
(c) and (d) Each doctor in a cluster is responsible for a wide range of services, including in-patient, surgery, out-patient, ambulatory and outreach services. It serves little purpose to compare the number of cases handled each month by SOP doctors among different clusters. Figures also vary across different specialties and clusters as the modes of service delivery, ratio of new cases to follow-up attendances and complexity of cases are all different.
Annex 2 sets out the number of doctors working in major specialties under each cluster from 2008-09 to 2012-13. Annex 3 and Annex 4 set out the numbers of new cases and follow-up attendances for major SOP services of each cluster from 2008-09 to 2012-13 respectively.
(e) HA co-ordinates and provides computed tomography, ultrasound scanning, mammography screening and magnetic resonance imaging services on a cluster basis for in-patients as well are patients receiving surgical, out-patient and ambulatory services. The lower quartile (25th percentile), median (50th percentile), upper quartile (75th percentile) and the longest (90th percentile) waiting time of patients who have received such services (including new cases and follow-up attendances) in each cluster from 2010-11 to 2012-13 (from July 1 to June 30 of the following year) (note: HA has not maintained figures for 2008-09 and 2009-10) are shown in Annex 5.
Ends/Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Issued at HKT 18:06
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