People who have financial difficulties would be able to apply online for waivers of healthcare charges in a few months' time.

The online applications will be possible under an expansion of waiver mechanism for healthcare charges as part of reforms to the city’s healthcare sector, the Hospital Authority said on Wednesday.

To apply, patients must at present submit documents at public hospitals or social service centres for assessment.

However, Priscilla Poon, the authority’s chief manager of allied health, said officials are looking to utilise technology.

“We are thinking that at about the end of this year we would be able to release a simple version of this waiver app, that the patients are able to access [via] ‘HA Go’ to see how long their waiver period is and what the validity period is,” she said.

“By around the second quarter of next year, we should be able to launch this online application.”

Under the reforms, the government will relax the income and asset requirements for people to qualify for a fee waiver, meaning an extra 1.1 million people will be eligible.

The validity period of each waiver application will be extended from 12 to 18 months, which Poon said is a way to alleviate the workload of medical social workers.

“It reduces the frequency of visits of patients to the medical social worker department,” she said.

Among other changes to the fee waiver mechanism are the inclusion of people aged under 65 who use general outpatient services occasionally and the revision of the definition of “family” to exclude members living with the patient who have no direct financial ties from asset reviews.