TNAG-1855-FCO40-2630-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-memoranda-and-minutes-of-me-1989 — Page 183

HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL-8 March 1989

香港立法局 一九八九年三月八日

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consecutive large budget surpluses. In area of medial services, we have succeeded in providing higher minimum standard to meet the ever increasing demand of our citizens. In some aspects, our medical services are better organized to maximize our staff resources. But in other areas little has been done to improve the actual quality of services provided.

During the past years, we have annual increment in our budgetary allocation for medical and health services in the region of 8% to 9%. However, this increase in our resources has largely been swallowed up by inflation and increasing demand for additional services. Matters such as overcrowding in our regional public hospitals, inadequate staff, equipment support and long patient waiting time and, in particular, the quality of primary health care are constant sources of complaint. Steps have been taken by the Administration in the formation of a hospital authority in order to increase flexibility and to improve efficiency in the performance of our medical services. The provisional authority has now been set up to do all the preparation work for the formation of the Hospital Authority and I must say that improvement in terms of efficiency and flexibility will take time to work its way through.

The establishment of a hospital authority will not resolve the fundamental problem facing the health service which is largely a question of funding. Perhaps it is time we again examine the policy towards the delivery of health service including primary health care. Are we going to continue to have a heavily subsidized service? What priority do we give to improve the present quality of service significantly? What are our long-term financial commitment from general revenue if we really give priority to improve the quality of service and the sources of funding? In Hong Kong, we have a low tax system and the medical service offered is non-means-tested and heavily subsidized. Apart from one or two areas where we can expect the Medical and Health Department to improve efficiency or in redeployment of their staff to where it is more urgently needed, little can be demanded from the department, because they are also restricted by the annual budgetary allocation granted to them. As far as I can see, the same difficulties will be faced by the future Hospital Authority in providing all the medical services really needed.

Despite the fact that we have approximately 9% increase in our budgetary allocation for the hospital services this year, with the current rate of inflation, increase in wages, cost of medical equipment and medicine, little improvement in quality can be expected. So far I have to say with the opening of some of our new regional hospitals this will significantly lessen the overcrowding in some of our existing hospitals. But with the increasing movement of our population, a saturation in demand will soon be met. The recent incident of work to rule by our medical staff in the public health sector is an example of breakdown in