This may hurt a little – Hong Kong dental school raises fees for certain treatments by up to 20 per cent
Dentures, veneers and orthodontic treatment will cost more as training facility aims to recover the full cost of the procedures
Patients who receive cut-price treatment at Hong Kong’s dental teaching hospital will have to pay up to 20 per cent more from Friday for certain procedures.
Prince Philip Dental Hospital in Sai Ying Pun will raise fees by between four and 20 per cent for general dental appliances, such as dentures, veneers and inlays, and orthodontic treatment, which deals with irregularities in the teeth and jaw.
A spokesman said the government subvented hospital only recovered 37 to 92 per cent of the costs of such treatment.
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“To alleviate the impact on teaching patients, fees will be increased gradually with a view to achieving full-cost recovery in the long run,” he said.
But he was unable to provide a timeline for future fee increases at the moment.
Patients are treated by trainee dentists and enjoy services at a nominal cost at the hospital, which provides facilities for teaching and research for the University of Hong Kong’s faculty of dentistry. The cost of fitting dentures, for example, is currently between HK$300 and HK$610 per jaw, while private patients pay between HK$1,570 and HK$6,980 for a similar service.
These patients will now have to pay HK$730 per jaw for the fitting of a removable partial or complete metal denture, HK$120 more than the current price..
The spokesman said that as most orthodontic treatments were mainly for aesthetic purposes and that the hospital’s fees for teaching patients were much lower than market prices, the revision should not affect new patients much.
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When asked whether the increase was related to the dental school’s planned expansion over the next six years, the spokesman said that the finances of the two institutions were handled separately.
Fees for other types of treatments for teaching patients would remain unchanged.
Patients who started a course of treatment before Friday would continue to pay according to the existing fee schedule.
Central and Western district councillor Chan Choi-hi said it was unfortunate that the fees were going up as residents in his district had complained about the expense of private services, while the wait for government dental services was long and only covered limited treatments such as tooth extraction.
