Waiting Time for New Case Booking at
Eye Specialist Out-patient Clinics



Specialist outpatient clinics have implemented a triage system to ensure patients with urgent conditions requiring early intervention are treated with priority. Referrals of new patients are usually first screened by a nurse and then by a specialist doctor of the relevant specialty for classification into Urgent, Semi-urgent and Stable categories. HA's targets are to maintain the median waiting time of Urgent and Semi-urgent cases within two weeks and eight weeks respectively.

In the past 12 months (01 July 2025 - 30 June 2026), there were 150,517 new case bookings in Eye Specialist Out-patient Clinics, with waiting time as follows:
 
  New case bookings(2) Waiting Time
Number
Percentage
 
Hong Kong East
Hong Kong West
Kowloon Central
Kowloon East
Kowloon West
New Territories East
New Territories West
Urgent Case
44,443
30%
Median
Less than 1 week
Less than 1 week
Less than 1 week
Less than 1 week
Less than 1 week
Less than 1 week
Less than 1 week
Semi-urgent Case
30,410
20%
Median
6
weeks
5
weeks
4
weeks
6
weeks
6
weeks
6
weeks
4
weeks
Stable Case
75,657
50%
Median
24
weeks
36
weeks
32
weeks
38
weeks
43
weeks
70
weeks
31
weeks
Longest(1)
58
weeks
55
weeks
67
weeks
100
weeks
98
weeks
114
weeks
78
weeks

(For reference only)
Date of Next Update: 30 October 2026

Notes:
(1) The longest (90th percentile) waiting time implies that appointments are earlier than the indicated time in 90% of the new case bookings
(2) Excluding cases pending for triage
(3) The information on this page is based on the old clustering arrangement. The Hong Kong East Cluster and the Hong Kong West Cluster have officially been integrated to establish the Hong Kong Island Cluster from 1 April 2026. The information will be updated in due course.


Due to recent surge of new referrals, Hong Kong Eye Hospital (HKEH) in Kowloon Central Cluster needs to focus resources and manpower on urgent patients of the Priority 1 and Priority 2 categories. Starting from 3 January 2022, HKEH will suspend booking of appointments for stable patients catogorised as routine new cases from other Clusters, until further notice. Patients could make appointments with SOPCs in Clusters according to the residential addresses.