LettersHong Kong’s public hospitals will meet the challenge of staff shortages and more
- Programmes are in place to offer more flexible work options to attract staff, enhance IT capability, strengthen research and expand facilities
The Hospital Authority will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year. But it wasn’t all plain sailing: we did face a lot of significant challenges and changes which, in certain ways, helped us grow stronger and find our way forward. A pair of twins that have grown with us all these years are “rising demand for Hospital Authority services” and “manpower shortages”.
We have started to recruit non-locally-trained doctors under limited registration, and will continue to train more nurses. We are also enhancing the role of allied health professionals to further strengthen multidisciplinary care.
While health care remains a highly labour-intensive sector, the physical facilities of our hospitals and clinics also greatly affect our service capacity. We still lack the space to further extend our services, but the authority is funding two 10-year hospital development plans to the tune of HK$470 billion – one already under way and a second starting in 2027 – with which we expect to deliver some 14,000 additional beds and other hospital facilities that will largely meet the projected service demand up to 2036.
