25
45.
average
New
cost
services are enormously expensive. Already the
of providing a bed in a government hospital is
over $1,000 per day. of this, 97% is met by the taxpayer.
We can be proud that proper treatment for the sick is not a
privilege reserved for the better off.
continue to provide
But we cannot
more and more sophisticated treatment,
or the choice of service that people increasingly want,
unless we begin
to
move away from our traditional "public
assistance" approach to
hospital care. This has tended to
In the
assume that the average in-patient is impoverished.
Hong Kong of the 1990s, such an approach will be out of
date.
46.
The establishment of the Hospital Authority is a
towards achieving an improved and more efficient
provision. The birth of the Authority was not
major step
standard of
painless.
This
was no
complexity of the
changes
surprise,
involved.
given the size and
Now that the initial
hurdles have been cleared and we have the new management
team in place, I hope that all concerned will work together
to take advantage of the scope for improvement which the new
system will offer. By next year, the Authority will have
taken over the management of all public hospitals. The
between government and subvented facilities will
distinction
/gradually
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