Replies to LegCo questions
LCQ10: Public healthcare services
Following is a question by Dr Hon Leung Ka-lau and a written reply by the
Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man, in the Legislative Council
today (January 9):
Question:
Will the Government inform this Council of the number of patients
receiving the following services provided by the Hospital Authority (HA)
and the Department of Health (DH) during the period from 1997-1998 to
2010-2011, broken down in the format in Annex 1 by the patients' district
of residence (in terms of District Council district) and the hospital
cluster where such services are provided:
(a) specialist out-patient service provided by HA;
(b) general out-patient service and primary care provided by HA;
(c) non-general out-patient service provided by DH;
(d) general out-patient service and primary care provided by DH; and
(e) accident and emergency service provided by HA?
Reply:
President,
(a), (b) and (e) The Hospital Authority (HA) provides different kinds of
public healthcare services throughout the territory to enable patients to
have convenient access to these services according to their needs. HA
encourages patients to seek medical treatment from the hospital
clusters/regional hospitals in the districts of their residence so as to
facilitate the follow-up of any of their chronic conditions and the
provision of community support. Nevertheless, individual patients may have
other considerations when they choose a medical facility for medical
treatment. For instance, they may choose to receive medical treatment at a
specialist or general out-patient clinic in a certain district for the
convenience of travelling to and from their work place. And under
emergency circumstances, they may also be transferred to an acute hospital
in the proximity to the pick-up location having regard to the ambulance
route, etc.
In respect of parts (a), (b) and (e) of the question, statistical figures
pertaining to the specialist out-patient, general out-patient and accident
and emergency services provided by HA, broken down by hospital cluster and
year, are set out in Annexes 2 to 4 respectively.
Since HA manages its resources allocation and service arrangements on the
basis of hospital clusters, the analysis of statistical figures on
cross-district services are based on hospital clusters instead of District
Council districts. Besides, as HA adopted a computer programme in phases
after the SARS incident to assist frontline staff to systematically input
the residential address reported by patients and convert them into
district codes for analysis, and the computer system of HA mainly records
the number of attendances (instead of the number of patients), an analysis
of patients' reported residential addresses can only be provided starting
from 2006/07 in terms of the numbers of attendances.
(c) and (d) As for the services of the Department of Health (DH), members
of the public in general are not required to use the service of DH
according to the district of their residence. They may choose to receive
services from any clinic/centre taking into account such factors as
district of residence, place of work or personal preferences, etc. As the
computer systems of the respective services mainly record the number of
attendances and are unable to compile statistical figures based on the
residential addresses of the service users, we can only provide a
breakdown of the number of attendances in the clinics/centres by District
Council districts.
The public general out-patient clinics under DH have been transferred to
HA since July 2003. We have already provided in Annex 3 statistical
figures pertaining to the general out-patient service provided by HA. As
for statistical figures pertaining to the specialist out-patient service
and primary care and health services provided by DH during the same
period, they are set out in Annex 5 and 6 respectively.
Ends/Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Issued at HKT 15:35
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Annex