A database of patients’ post-operation wounds and automated medicine dispensing cabinets are among six measures Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority will adopt after a series of medical blunders last year, including one in which a patient found a piece of gauze left in his scrotum two months after surgery. Authority chief executive Dr Tony Ko Pat-sing…
Hong Kong health authorities will relax the eligibility criteria of a fee waiver mechanism at public hospitals, benefiting an extra 1.1 million patients starting in 2026. Under the reform of the public healthcare service subsidy model, non-urgent patients will pay HK$400 (US$52), double the current price of HK$180, at emergency departments, with the collected fees…
Hong Kong authorities want to bring a 10 per cent no-show rate for free radiology services down to zero under a proposal to make residents with non-urgent medical needs pay for certain scans. But the Hospital Authority said on Friday that the proposed co-payment model for radiology services such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic…
Requiring Hongkongers with non-urgent medical needs to pay separate fees for lab tests and scans at public hospitals could lead to abuse of emergency services in the hopes of getting free help, a former health official and a patients’ rights group have warned. Dr Luk Che-chung, a former chief executive of the Hospital Authority’s Hong…
Requiring Hongkongers with non-urgent medical needs to pay separate fees for lab tests and scans at public hospitals could lead to abuse of emergency services in the hopes of getting free help, a former health official and a patients’ rights group have warned. Dr Luk Che-chung, a former chief executive of the Hospital Authority’s Hong…
Hong Kong Children’s Hospital, recently forced to suspend services at the ear, nose and throat (ENT) department, will gradually resume operations in the second half of this year, or as soon as the next quarter “if possible”, as the Hospital Authority’s chief executive said he saw “light in the tunnel” over manpower shortages. Tony Ko…
Hong Kong’s winter flu season is expected to peak in early February, a respiratory disease expert has predicted, with 15 deaths in the second week of January confirmed to be people infected with influenza. David Hui Shu-cheong, a professor of respiratory medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, called for more residents to get…
Hongkongers will have quicker and cheaper access to new medications when the Hospital Authority starts centralising new drug assessments and improving its procurement system to cut introduction times to its formulary by five months. The authority’s chief pharmacist, William Chui Chun-ming, said on Thursday doctors would no longer need to go through the assessment at…
The number of non-locally trained doctors working at Hong Kong’s public hospitals will reach 300 by the end of the year, including about 70 under an exchange programme with mainland China and Macau, health authorities have said. The Hospital Authority chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling said on Monday that officials had spoken with their mainland and…