Health authorities said on Thursday that higher public medical fees instituted in January have led to a more efficient use of medical resources at accident and emergency wards and a positive effect on overall hospital services.

Since the start of 2026, the fee reforms saw rises in a wide range of services, with charges for non-urgent, semi-urgent and urgent cases at A&E units raised to HK$400.

Critical and emergency patients, however, don't have to pay, and more patients with financial difficulty are eligible to have their fees waived after passing a means test.

The Hospital Authority said that as of February 10, this year had seen nearly 200,000 emergency ward patients, down by nearly 11 percent year on year.

The number of patients triaged as semi-urgent and non-urgent fell by nearly 19 percent.

Director of cluster services Wong Yiu-chung said the drop in cases allowed healthcare staff to focus on handling urgent cases, which are what the emergency wards are all about.

"Our colleagues used to be at odds with patients whose medical conditions were considered to be relatively non-urgent just because they found the waiting times to be too long," he told the Information Services Department.

"But now things are smoother overall as there are relatively fewer such cases and there are also fewer conflicts."

Wong said the authority had given the green light for medical fee waivers to be granted to more than 150,000 patients so far this year, significantly more than around 14,000 annually.

Health authorities will review the impact of the fees reform every two years, particularly in terms of implementation and effectiveness.

The Hospital Authority also stressed on social media that non-urgent patients can make visits to public family medicine clinics, private clinics and emergency wards at private hospitals.


Edited by Edmond Fong