In 2013-14, the Hospital Authority (HA) placed great emphasis on addressing the current and future risks we face in delivering high-quality people-centred care.
With growing public expectations over our ability to meet the community’s medical needs, we implemented further initiatives to tackle the serious issue of overstretched services. We recruited 291 resident trainees, 12 non-local doctors, 2,097 nurses and 529 allied health professionals to alleviate increasing pressure on frontline staff as well as the severe shortage of clinicians in certain specialties. Existing talent was motivated through enhanced promotion and career development opportunities, including the creation of 120 new Associate Consultant openings and the provision of 180 overseas training scholarships.
We also stepped up the efforts to expand our service capacity. We set up new acute and extra convalescent beds for inpatients, opened additional operating theatre sessions for cancer surgeries and emergency surgeries, and increased doctor sessions in our general and specialist outpatient clinics. Three on-going public-private partnership programmes – involving cataract, primary care and radiology services respectively – have enabled around 3,000 patients to receive earlier treatment. We also extended the community case management programme to cover three more districts, providing care for around 2,800 patients with severe mental illnesses.
Strategic use of technology was promoted to avoid unnecessary hospitalisation and provide more efficient diagnostic services to reduce the incidence of unnecessary complications that would require more invasive treatment. This included the provision of 27,000 additional patient attendances for Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Computerised Tomography scans, and 91 collaborative robotic-assisted surgery cases across the clusters.
We made significant progress with the expansion and redevelopment of our infrastructure – commencing patient services at the new North Lantau Hospital in September 2013 and holding the ground-breaking ceremony for the Hong Kong Children’s Hospital in Kai Tak in February 2014, in addition to ongoing improvement works at existing hospitals such as Caritas Medical Centre, United Christian Hospital, Queen Mary Hospital, Kwong Wah Hospital, Kwai Chung Hospital and Yan Chai Hospital.
Senior appointments in 2013-14 included Ms Clara Chin Sheung-Chi as Finance Director, Dr Theresa Li Tak-lai as Head of Human Resources, and Dr Derrick Au Kit-sing as Director (Quality & Safety) at HA Head Office. At the Cluster level, Dr Hung Chi-tim took up the post of Cluster Chief Executive of New Territories East Cluster, and Dr Albert Lo Chi-yuen took up the post of Cluster Chief Executive of Kowloon Central Cluster. We also bade farewell to former Director (Finance) Ms Nancy Tse and former New Territories East Cluster Chief Executive Dr Fung Hong who both made invaluable contribution to HA during their many years of service.
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to our passionate and dedicated staff whose efforts have enabled HA to excel among the leading public healthcare services in the world. My thanks also go to the Hong Kong Government which, on top of its continuing support through annual recurrent funding and policy decisions, has approved a HK$13 billion one-off grant to help fund minor improvement works over the next 10 years.
We are facing significant challenges and there is much we must do to maintain the quality of healthcare. Our ability to minimise gaps between our services and patient needs rests on strong support from the community at large. With their invaluable assistance and trust, we will uphold our commitment to enhancing the lifelong health and well-being of people in Hong Kong.
PY LEUNG
Chief Executive