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Government strives to provide quality health-care services
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     The Government has been striving to provide quality health-care services to the public.  It will continue to adopt appropriate measures to cope with challenges including growing and ageing population as well as increasing public demand for health-care services, with a view to safeguarding public health and maintaining the high quality and sustainable development of health-care services.
    
     In response to the various measures proposed by the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party to address the manpower shortage problem in the public health-care sector, a spokesman for the Food and Health Bureau (FHB) said today (February 25) that a steering committee chaired by the Secretary for Food and Health is conducting a strategic review on Hong Kong's health-care manpower planning and professional development.
     
     The steering committee is now reviewing issues including how to cope with the anticipated demand for health-care manpower, strengthen professional training and promote professional development.  It will make recommendations to the Government for the healthy and sustainable development of our health-care system.

     "Meanwhile, the Government and the Hospital Authority (HA) are implementing various measures to ensure sufficient health-care personnel for service provision," the spokesman added.

     These measures include:

* The Government has allocated an additional $200 million to increase the number of first-year first-degree places in medicine by 100 to 420, nursing by 40 to 630 and allied health professionals by 146 for the triennial cycle starting from 2012-13. Training places for nurses offered by self-financing post-secondary institutions have also increased;

* The FHB and the Medical Council of Hong Kong are taking active steps to study measures to refine the arrangements for the licensing examination for overseas medical graduates, including increasing the examination sitting to twice a year and considering more flexibility in internship arrangements, in order to encourage qualified overseas doctors to practise in Hong Kong;

* The HA has strengthened its recruitment, including recruiting overseas doctors by way of Limited Registration, recruiting part-time doctors in various specialties and providing nurse training programmes.  As at the end of October 2013, the HA recruited additional 166 doctors and 630 nurses in 2013-14, with a net increase of 7.4% and 11.7% in the number of doctors and nurses respectively as compared to 2010-11;

* The HA has improved the terms and conditions of its staff to retain staff, including creation of additional promotion posts, provision of education allowance, providing doctors taking long-term night shift with additional allowance and enhancing clerical support;

 * The HA actively recruits experienced retired doctors as part-time doctors in the HA and will consider enhancing the flexibility of the relevant recruitment mechanism.

     Besides, the Government set up the Steering Committee on Review of HA in August last year to conduct an overall review on the operation of the HA. The objective of the review is to ensure that the HA will continue to provide quality and effective service of high standard under the twin-track health-care system.

    "The review will cover the HA's management and cluster arrangement, resource management, service levels and overall cost effectiveness.

     "To conduct a comprehensive review, the Committee has held three meetings and started to meet with various stakeholders through meetings since early this year to learn the views of the community on the HA's operation," the spokesman said.

     On the regulation of private health-care facilities, the spokesman said that the relevant review would soon be concluded. The concerned review steering committee has already set out a list of high-risk cosmetic procedures that should be performed by registered medical practitioners/dentists. It will soon put forward recommendations on regulation of private hospitals and ambulatory medical centres.

     "The Administration will proceed to consult the public and prepare for the necessary legislative procedures in accordance with the results of the consultation," he said.

     On the progress of the Electronic Health Record (eHR) Programme, the spokesman said it is in good progress, noting that the development of core components of the eHR Sharing System and relevant software is also on track.

     "We are now drafting the eHR Sharing System Bill, with a view to introducing the bill to the Legislative Council later. We hope that the system can be launched by the end of 2014 after the passage of the bill," he said.

     In addition to the above measures and reviews, the spokesman noted that the Government will continue to enhance public health-care services, increase and renew public health-care facilities in order to meet the growing demand for medical services and continuously provide high-quality health-care services to the public.

     He said the FHB welcomes legislators to give views on how to improve local health-care services and manpower arrangement, adding that the bureau will continue to maintain communication and exchange views with them. A meeting with the legislators of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party  will be arranged later to learn more about their suggestions.

Ends/Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Issued at HKT 20:25

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