ENG-2011 — Page 210

170 Health

department's Centre for Health Protection make visits to primary schools every year to administer free vaccinations for students.

Elderly Health

The DH has 18 elderly health centres and 18 visiting health teams to render primary health care to the elderly, improve their ability to care for themselves and encourage healthy living and their family's support. These centres provide health. assessments, curative treatment, health education and counselling to people aged 65 and above. The visiting health teams conduct health promotion activities for the elderly and provide training for carers to improve their caring skills. In 2011, the elderly health centres recorded 38 500 enrolments and 175 000 attendances for health assessment and medical consultation, while the visiting health teams provided service to 296 000 persons.

Community Health

In line with the international trend of greater focus on development of ambulatory and community care programmes, the HA has stepped up the development of community healthcare services to reduce reliance on inpatient services and facilitate patients' rehabilitation in the community. The HA is committed to stepping up training for family physicians, community paediatricians, community physicians, general practitioners and other community health practitioners in the drive to improve community health care.

The HA spent $900 million on community health services in the 2010-11 financial year. In 2011, a total of 1 855 400 home visits and outreach care services were conducted, including those for elderly people and mental patients.

Over 80 per cent of those receiving community nursing care are elderly people. Community geriatric assessment teams make regular visits to residential care homes for the elderly (RCHES) to assess residents' medical needs and to provide them with treatment. They also train RCHE staff to improve their service quality. To strengthen the support for elderly people discharged from hospital, HA launched an Integrated Discharge Support Trial Programme for Elderly Patients which aims to reduce the unplanned hospital re-admission rate of high-risk discharged elderly patients through better discharge planning and a 'one-stop' post-discharge support arrangement, and to relieve the stress of carers of discharged elderly patients through carer training and other support services.

Another improvement is the stationing of more community nurses at care centres and NGOs to provide on-site care in helping elderly patients discharged from hospital to recover at home.

Extended care hospitals provide specialist programmes for the rehabilitation of pulmonary, orthopaedic, geriatric and cardiac patients, while short-term rehabilitation programmes are provided for discharged patients in day and outpatient clinics. Integrated palliative day care centres provide a full range of services for reducing the pain or stress of patients with incurable illnesses.

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