A factor that makes manpower planning for doctors so difficult is the long time it takes to train a doctor, seven years, which means there is often a big gap between a current shortage and a possible future surplus.
It takes six years for a medical student to finish university. Graduates then need to complete a one-year internship before they can register as a medical practitioner.
Another problem is the lack of a long-term funding arrangement between the government and the Hospital Authority - the government approves its funding on an annual basis. This means planning of staffing levels is only done in the short term.
Medical legislator Dr Leung Ka-lau said that because the authority could not guarantee what its funding would be for five to 10 years, it could not decide on the number of doctors it could employ beyond the year for which it had a definite funding figure.
'As a result, the number of public doctors hired each year is decided by the finances of the Hospital Authority rather than the real need of society,' Leung said. 'In the several years after 1997, the authority had trouble hiring all the medical graduates because of financial difficulties, and now we have a shortage.'
The authority loses 5 per cent of its doctors per year, while individual departments such as internal medicine and obstetrics and gynaecology have turnovers of more than 11 per cent.