A public-private partnership is central to planned reforms of the delivery of health care, which would see family doctors play a greater role through community-based medicine. Until the government can settle on reforms of health care financing, however, a closer partnership remains largely a vision. The rigid wall between heavily subsidised public hospitals, which treat 90 per cent of people, and the private sector will remain. Private hospitals will still be too expensive for all but the wealthy and the heavily insured, and private doctors will still not be able to admit their patients to public hospitals.
The government, meanwhile, has nominated health care as one of the city's six new economic pillars. It has just launched that vision by calling for expressions of interest in four new sites for private hospitals expected to offer a mix of more moderately and transparently priced services and take the pressure off public hospitals. That is to be welcomed if fees at the new hospitals fall within the budgets of more people and their personal insurance plans, even if it brings only a marginal increase in the interface between private doctors and hospitals generally.
Hospital Authority chairman Anthony Wu Ting-yuk has come up with a sensible suggestion for using the new hospitals to expand that interface. He says they should offer both private and public treatment in separate wings, with doctors serving both and having a wing or block of their own for their offices and clinics. Clinical services such as radiology and laboratories, and catering facilities would be shared.
Wu rightly said it was time to think outside the box about the new hospital projects - not that the idea is entirely new. He cited Australia and Singapore for doctors' blocks next to private hospitals, which are sometimes also near public hospitals.
Apart from the obvious efficiency advantages in patient care, private doctors' expertise is better utilised if it can flow freely in public and private hospitals. That would, after all, represent a better return for the community on the considerable cost of their training.
Wu suggests the operators of the new hospitals could offer private doctors long leases to attract them to a public-private partnership model.