Hospital Authority faces increasing demands on its services
Leung Pak-yin says the Hospital Authority is constantly striving to meet increasing demands on services, which have been stretched by an ageing population and a rise in chronic illnesses
Over the past 22 years, the Hospital Authority has grown and developed to become a leading public health care system providing comprehensive medical services. Through an extensive network of 41 hospitals and institutions, 47 specialist outpatient clinics and 74 general outpatient clinics, our dedicated team of more than 63,000 staff fulfil around 90 per cent of Hong Kong's secondary and tertiary medical needs, using just 2.4 per cent of our city's gross domestic product.
Based on 2012 statistics, the authority will handle an average of 24,000 specialist outpatient attendances in the next 24 hours. That's about 8.9 million a year. Annually, there are also 1.5 million patient discharges, 2.2 million accident and emergency attendances, 5.7 million primary care visits and 1.9 million community outreach visits.
The accelerating growth in need for our services is placing...more complex demands on our staff
It is likely that these numbers will continue to grow while we face increasingly complex medical needs.
The authority will require an extra 2,600 beds to meet the projected service demand a little under a decade from now, which implies the need for 800 more doctors, 2,700 new nurses and 1,000 extra allied health professionals. That need will continue to escalate, and we project a demand for an additional 6,600 new beds 10 years further on, in 2031.
And even with strong government support, we do not have unlimited resources. We must therefore seek new ways to efficiently deploy our assets to the greatest benefit of the community.
The accelerating growth in need for our services is placing increasing and more complex demands on our staff, and serious manpower shortages have occurred in certain high-pressure areas.