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Health

Hong Kong's Domestic Health Accounts' show total health expenditure increased from 3.6 per cent to 6.2 per cent of Gross Domestic Product from 1989-90 to 2018-19. Over the same period, public health spending ($91.1 billion in 2018-19, or 3.2 per cent of GDP) rose from 40 per cent to 51 per cent of total health expenditure. The government's recurrent funding for health has risen substantially over the past five years, from $56.5 billion in 2015 to $87.1 billion by 2020, an increase of about 54 per cent. On a year-on-year basis, the recurrent funding for health grew more than 8 per cent from $80.6 billion in 2019. It accounted for 18 per cent of the government's recurrent expenditure in 2020.

Healthcare Reform

In response to the challenges of an ageing population, the government is undertaking a number of initiatives to enhance the long-term sustainability of the healthcare system:

• Voluntary Health Insurance Scheme - The scheme was implemented fully in April 2019. It aims to regulate the quality of individual indemnity hospital insurance products and improve market transparency, providing consumers with greater confidence in purchasing health insurance and choosing private healthcare services, thereby alleviating pressure on the public healthcare system in the long run.

• Manpower planning and professional development - The government continues to follow up the recommendations in the Report of the Strategic Review on Healthcare Manpower Planning and Professional Development in order to plan for long-term manpower demand and to foster professional development. It is adopting a multi-pronged approach to boost manpower, including by increasing the number of local subsidised healthcare training places and attracting more qualified non-locally trained healthcare professionals to practise in Hong Kong.

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Regulation of private healthcare facilities - The Private Healthcare Facilities Ordinance, enacted in 2018, provides a new regulatory regime for private healthcare facilities that fits the present landscape of private healthcare services while further protecting patient safety and consumer rights. The government is implementing the regulatory regime in phases based on the types of private healthcare facilities and their risk levels.

Primary Health Care

Primary health care is the first step in the healthcare process. It covers a wide range of services, including health promotion and disease prevention, general outpatient and allied health services, and special services for people in specific age groups who do not need immediate hospital attention.

General outpatient and allied services are provided mainly by the private sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). On average, private Western clinics handle about

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A series of accounts compiled over the years in accordance with the International Classification for Health Accounts Framework developed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to keep track of Hong Kong's health spending and to allow for international comparison.

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