Healthcare Service in Hong Kong and its Challenges

Abstract

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region combines a British colonial history within a Chinese cultural context and offers its population a dual system with a comprehensive and efficient public health care system in tandem with private hospitals and practitioners. Multiple challenges are looming: increasing demand for health services due to an aging population, staff shortages at all levels, and an underdeveloped primary healthcare system. Health is determined by multiple factors and is defined as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. In recent years, the medical model of health focusing on pathology and disease has been considered insufficient, and a social model of health has been proposed, relying on a more holistic and broad definition of health. Rather than focusing on individual responsibility for health, the social model emphasises collective responsibility for health. This paper analyses the challenges facing Hong Kong in view of the social model of health. The discussion provides some reflections on medical dominance, the reasons behind limited primary care services, and what steps could be recommended to deliver healthcare services in Hong Kong in line with a more holistic view of health.

Cost-effectiveness of letermovir as cytomegalovirus prophylaxis in adult recipients of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in Hong Kong

“…Kong, the CMV seropositivity rate is around 90% 9 , making it a clinically meaningful site for the analysis. The availability, efficacy and efficiency of its healthcare service are in the bracket of developed countries [37][38][39] . Furthermore, Queen Mary Hospital is the only adult allogeneic HSCT center in Hong Kong, so that bias due to patient selection would be obviated.…”

Barriers to dementia diagnosis and care in China

“…There is a projected global shortage of healthcare workers including physicians, nurses, midwives and allied healthcare workers 7. In China, there are shortages of physicians, geriatricians, neurologists, psychiatrists and geriatric psychiatrists,65 66 as well as nurses, occupational therapists and physical therapists 66–68. Limited availability of healthcare workers in China is further compounded by lack of training on dementia diagnosis and care in medical schools and colleges for urban and rural physicians 17 22 33.…”

A systematic review to assess the impact of the Elderly Health Care Voucher Scheme (EHCVS) and the feasibility to fully adopt in Hong Kong elder care services

“…Although Hong Kong was transferred to the Chinese Government over 20 years ago, signi cant elements of the English health care system remain [22]. The health care system of Hong Kong continues to run on a dual-track basis, which provides comprehensive health care services to all citizens that are free -of -charge or at a minimal cost while allowing private health care providers to set their own fee schedules and deliver health care services tailor to consumers' needs [22,29]. Since there are no price controls at private health care sector, the cost of care in the private sector often tenfold the money being spent on public sector care provision [22].…”

“…The premise of the EHCVS is centralised around incentivising and hence shifting the care services for older persons to the private sector to improve public sector responsiveness and e ciency [50]. Further, it was also projected the scheme might reduce the number of patients waiting for treatment and increase the quality of care and patient satisfaction with public sector providers [29]. The idea of implementing a voucher mechanism to support the older population of Hong Kong was also seen as a tactic for the Chief Executive of Hong Kong back in 2008, which was believed to be politically favourable for an upcoming election [48].…”

“…Under the PPP, the government developed seven programs to reduce the burden and workload in the public health care sector [48]. These initiatives were projected to increase the quality and e ciency of health service delivery in government-funded health facilities by building greater connection and collaboration with the private health sector to ultimately bene t the health of the population [26,29,48]. The Elderly Health Care Voucher Scheme (EHCVS) was introduced on 1 January 2009 as one of the strategies under the PPP [6,48].…”