Use of facilities.
can be ensured in their review of clinic requirements. To ensure further improvements in the service at polyclinics and clinics, a reappraisal of the design of polyclinics and clinics is in hand. The urban clinics to be provided, following that at Ngau Tau Kok, will contain a larger waiting hall, six consulting rooms and increased provision for ancillary facilities, a larger maternal and child health section to accommodate improved facilities and family planning sessions and up to a maximum of 60 day beds.
8.5 To supplement these general out-patient facilities and support the hospital services, increased emphasis will be placed on the provision of polyclinics, specialist facilities and other specialist treatment centres including laboratories, radiology and expanded provision for medical rehabilitation. The MDAC pro- posals in the field of rehabilitation will be examined further and will be covered in a programme plan on services for the physically and mentally disabled, arrangements for which are in hand.
8.6 With the movement of population to new areas, additional clinics will be developed. In a number of areas, where clinics remain heavily crowded, it is likely to continue to be necessary to provide evening sessions; in addition, in any other area where the pressure on sessions warrants and the staffing situation permits the possibility of introducing new evening sessions will be con- sidered.
CHAPTER 9
THE SUPPLY OF DOCTORS
9.1 The implementation of the proposals described in this White Paper will increase the need for doctors.
9.2 On the basis of experience gained in Queen Elizabeth and Kowloon Hospitals and in clinics, and taking into account desirable variations in current ratios, endorsed by the MDAC, planning ratios were established as a basis for assessing future requirements for doctors. The MDAC concluded that to staff the forecast require- ments for Government hospital beds and consulting rooms and related facilities, and to provide a necessary minimum professional staff for administration, would require 1,344 doctors by 1982 in the Government service. (At 1st June 1974 there were 696
Government doctors and 101 housemen, giving a total of 797). The Committee considered however that if only the projects they proposed (to achieve 4.84 beds per 1,000 population) were carried through, the requirement for doctors would be lower, at 1,132 (Appendix 4 of their Report), to which a further 100 doctors should be added to provide for administrative and other special- ized services, making a total of 1,232.
9.3 By way of comparison the MDAC estimated the likely available supply of doctors in the Government service by 1982, on the assumption that no new source of supply was introduced beyond the recent expansion of the medical faculty at the Univer- sity of Hong Kong which now takes 150 students annually. The MDAC assumed a continuing average wastage rate of 12% (retirement and resignation), recruitment by the Government of about 70% of the new doctors qualifying in Hong Kong each year and continuing recruitment by the Government of about 20 doctors per year from overseas. On the basis of these assumptions they estimated that there were likely to be some 970 doctors in the Government service by 1982. Their calculations also show that by that time wastage and recruitment (on the assumptions above) would be more or less in balance in that the net recruit- ment might be of the order of only 10 doctors.
9.4 This shortfall may in practice be expected to be greater than forecast because the figures show that the Government's recruitment of overseas doctors has recently been averaging only 6 per year. If this continues, wastage would exceed recruitment. If in addition the number of consulting rooms were to be increased, so would the shortfall of doctors. It also appears that the number of doctors likely to be needed for the health services, health education, family planning services and the treatment of drug addiction may be larger than originally envisaged.
9.5 Assuming the completion of the general and psychiatric wings of the Princess Margaret Hospital at Lai Chi Kok, and the new general hospitals at Sha Tin and Tuen Mun and that the need for temporary and substandard beds in existing institutions will continue at its end-1972 level, the requirement for doctors to carry out the functions of the Medical and Health Department would be:
20
20
21