Hospital chiefs are admitting relatively healthy people to keep patient numbers up and maintain funding levels after the Sars outbreak, a source said yesterday.
Admissions to public hospitals dropped by almost 50 per cent at the height of the outbreak in April, and while they have picked up slightly, they remain low.
Medical workers claimed the numbers were returning by default because people with minor conditions were being admitted to fill beds in general wards.
The source described it as a burden for nurses and a waste of taxpayers' money.
The Hospital Authority denied patients were being admitted simply to fill empty beds.
But the source said patients with minor chest pains had been sent to general wards by accident and emergency departments when in the past they would have been sent home after a consultation.