Fewer people have sought help at accident and emergency (A&E) wards during the first Lunar New Year holiday since the city's public healthcare fee reforms came into effect, the Hospital Authority said on Friday.

Speaking on RTHK, the chairman of the Coordinating Committee in A&E at the authority, Axel Siu said the number of patients attending A&E units over the Lunar New Year holiday period fell by 11 to 15 percent compared to last year.

He said the changes in medical charges put in place in January had the effect of concentrating resources on treating patients with the most urgent needs.

"We aim to concentrate our medical resources on patients with urgent or critical conditions," Siu said.

"We believe this reform has achieved a certain level of effectiveness in shifting the public's choice of medical services and healthcare-seeking habits."

With most people expected to return to the city during the weekend after making the most of the holiday, Siu is bracing for a potential increase in patient numbers.

He said the Hospital Authority would monitor the situation closely and make suitable adjustments to services if necessary.

Siu added that patients with minor ailments could also visit family medicine clinics in 18 districts as well as Chinese medicine clinics.

Regarding A&E waiting times, he said the 30-minute treatment commitment rate and average waiting time for Category 3 emergency patients, or those classed as urgent cases, had improved.

"Between January 1 and February 10, the commitment rate had increased from 80.1 percent to 86.9 percent and the average waiting time had dropped from 24 minutes to 20 minutes compared to the same period of last year," he said. Those are improvements in the authority's performance pledge for 90 percent of patients requiring urgent treatment to be attended to within 30 minutes.

Following the implementation of the A&E refund mechanism for patients who leave without consulting doctors after bring triaged, he said 1,878 applications were received in January, mainly involving semi-urgent or non-urgent cases.

Siu expressed the belief that patients would feel more reassured after being classified as suffering from less urgent medical conditions, enabling some of them to choose alternative medical services.



Edited by Aaron Tam