Waiting Time for New Case Booking at
Psychiatry 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 October 2022 - 30 September 2023), there were 51,389 new case bookings in Psychiatry 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	2,535	5%	Median	1 week	1 week	Less than 1 week	1 week	Less than 1 week	1 week	1 week
Semi-urgent Case	9,710	19%	Median	3 weeks	4 weeks	4 weeks	4 weeks	4 weeks	4 weeks	4 weeks
Stable Case	39,138	76%	Median	22 weeks	41 weeks	22 weeks	57 weeks	29 weeks	69 weeks	41 weeks
			Longest(1)	73 weeks	86 weeks	63 weeks	95 weeks	94 weeks	93 weeks	94 weeks

(For reference only)
Date of Next Update: 31 January 2024

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) With effect from 1 October 2022, the waiting time for new case booking at Specialist Out-patient Clinics has incorporated integrated clinics