The HA view of clustering
I REFER to the letter headlined ''Bad news for patients'' (South China Morning Post, May 26), and wish to take this opportunity to explain the Hospital Authority's concept of hospital clustering.
First of all, I want to emphasise that the provision of public hospital services is on a territory-wide basis and not on a district basis. There is free cross-district utilisation of services.
Within the constraints of the geographical location of our existing hospitals, we will rationalise the provision of services and maximise our ability to deliver quality patient care. One of our initiatives is the grouping of general hospitals into eight functional clusters.
The objective is to provide a whole range of care types required to meet the biological, physical, mental and social needs of patients and to ensure continuity and service coverage for the whole episode of illness.
To extend the concept further into the continuum of ambulatory and community care, the specialist out-patient centres will also be regrouped to link with the hospital clusters.
I hope the above explanation gives a clearer idea of the hospital clustering concept.
Dr FUNG HONG for Director of Operations Hospital Authority
