Extra cash no cure for health system's ills

Our public health system is constantly having greater demands imposed on it. With an ageing society like Hong Kong's, this is unavoidable: the older the population, the greater the need for medical treatment and, subsequently, the higher the costs.

The government well knows this, which is why Financial Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen proposed a 2.4 per cent increase in the Hospital Authority's budget for this financial year to HK$28.6 billion. As the authority's executive director Shane Solomon has revealed, it will be mainly spent on employing hundreds more doctors and buying equipment.

Given the strains the authority is under, these are necessary moves. But they are only interim, short-term sticking plasters to a wound that requires bolder steps to ensure sustained healing.

Well-trained and dedicated medical professionals are the centrepiece of a properly run health-care system. Hong Kong's government has been fortunate to have such people in its public hospitals and clinics and the dividends are clearly shown in the high quality treatment available. The standards are so good that demand for private medical insurance is relatively low here compared with other parts of the world.

But cracks have been showing, as highlighted by complaints in recent years by doctors about the long hours they have been working. Some have been forced to work for 36 hours at a stretch, a situation that is not good for their health and morale, or the patients they are tending. They took the authority to court and a year ago, judges held that they should be compensated for working on their rest days and statutory holidays. A HK$400 million compensation deal was later struck.

Mr Solomon is now making good with pledges to shorten doctors' working hours by hiring more medics. He has not stipulated the ideal number of hours they should work, although this should be in line with other recognised centres of medical excellence such as Britain and Australia, where doctors work shifts of no more than 13 and 16 hours respectively. Reducing hours to such levels would be a step in the right direction.