Finger on the pulse: hospital chief’s vision for improving Hong Kong’s public health service
Hospital Authority chairman John Leong looks back at his decades in the medical profession and how he plans to tackle the many challenges that loom
He may be the lesser known of the Leong brothers, but Hospital Authority chairman Professor John Leong Chi-yan can hold his own in the public health care sector.
An orthopaedician who also served as head of the Open University for a decade, 73-year-old Leong is now in his second term helming Hong Kong’s public hospitals – a position previously held by his elder brother, Dr Leong Che-hung.
While the older Leong has been involved in more hotly debated issues, including the University of Hong Kong appointment saga of Johannes Chan Man-mun and the Standard Working Hours committee, the challenges faced by the younger Leong as the leading figure in the city’s public health care system are thorny, too.
Apart from coming up with solutions to tackle problems associated with a rapidly ageing population, John Leong is under immense public scrutiny after frequent media reports of medical blunders and the overburdened public hospital system.
Following in the footsteps of his father and brother, Leong started his career in 1965 when he graduated from HKU’s medical school. During his 38 years at the university and Queen Mary Hospital, Leong rose to prominence as a world-renowned clinician in orthopaedics.