The Hospital Authority said a third stroke centre was in the process of being set up at Prince of Wales Hospital amid hopes that it could achieve national accreditation by the end of this year.

The move follows the founding of stroke centres at Tuen Mun and Queen Mary hospitals last year, with the two treatment hubs quickly meeting the national accreditation standard for stroke care by late December.

Kelvin Tsoi, a department of medicine and geriatrics consultant at Tuen Mun Hospital, said green channels at stroke centres speed up treatment by dealing away with the need to brief staff up the chain multiple times on the condition of patients.

Under the green-channel system, he said, "once the A&E doctor notices that there's a stroke patient, then they will activate a stroke call in the Hospital Authority system, and then every one of us will know that we've got a stroke patient.

"We'll come to assess the stroke patient very quickly, and we'll arrange all the investigation and treatment accordingly in a very fast way, and without any obstacles."

There is, Tsoi added, also an in-house communication app for staff to keep track of a patient's condition and assessments of their progress.

The moves to set up such treatment centres are timely, with Chris Tsang, chief manager of integrated clinical services at the Hospital Authority, saying last year saw 19,000 stroke admissions last year.

Younger people were also increasingly affected, with the number of patients aged between 18 and 55 increasing by one fifth in 2021 compared to 20 years ago.

Tsang also pointed out that there were 55.7 stroke cases per 100,000 people in 2021, up from 39.1 cases in 2001.

Stroke patient care performance in Hong Kong has also improved, meeting the national accreditation standard.

Tsang said the door-to-needle time – the time between when patients arrive at an accident and emergency department to when they receive the clot-busting treatment – has improved from 68 minutes in 2021 to 58 minutes in 2025.

The door-to-puncture time – the time from arrival to receiving endovascular therapy – also decreased from 110 minutes in 2021 to 93 minutes in 2025.

That, Tsang added, has been accompanied by a drop in the mortality rate for stroke patients from 24.6 percent in 2021 to 16.4 percent in 2025.