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Liaison psychiatry service
Following is a question by Dr the Hon Huang Chen-ya and a written reply by the Secretary for Health and Welfare, Mrs Katherine Fok, in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Question:
Reply:
Does the Government know:
(a)
(b)
which public hospitals have psychiatric wards and which public hospitals only provide psychiatric consultation service; and
of the number of non-psychiatric cases, as well as the categories of such cases, in public hospitals requiring psychiatric consultation in the past year; and the number of patients in these cases who had to wait for more than 24 hours before receiving psychiatric consultation service?
A list of public hospitals with an established department of psychiatry and psychiatric in-patient facilities is set out at Annex.
All patients seeking medical treatment in public hospitals can have access to psychiatric consultation service, where necessary. This is achieved through hospital clustering and service networking. The liaison psychiatry service offers hospitals without psychiatric units in each cluster with professional assistance ranging from telephone conversation between the psychiatrist and non-psychiatrist concerned to formal psychiatric assessment and consultation on the patient. Some 11,500 referrals were made through this service during the past year but data is not readily available to classify these cases by category.
Liaison psychiatry service has been rendered to about 85% of patients within two days of referral. There are established procedures whereby patients with urgent and complex psychiatric conditions are accorded priority for treatment within the same day as far as possible. Arrangements can also be made to transfer patients with propensity to violence or who are likely to harm themselves or others to psychiatric hospitals for immediate management.