Health officials on Friday said the new Kai Tak Hospital would open in phases from October, with services gradually moving there from Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

The new hospital will be the biggest in Hong Kong, both in terms of size and the number of beds, with over 500,000 square metres of floor area and 2,400 beds.

Eric Cheung, who is in charge of the Hospital Authority's Kowloon Central Cluster, said it would have the biggest pharmacy of all public hospitals as well.

Cheung noted that the Specialist Out-patient Clinic Block and the Oncology Block are scheduled to commence services in October, while other services will follow later on.

He said the first phase would involve mainly outpatients and ambulatory patients.

"We will have patients from the department of medicine, department of surgery, neurosurgery, and oncology, as well as a number of family medicine clinics that we're looking at opening there in the first phase," he said.

"We estimate about 2,000 to 3,000 head counts moving in and out of the premises on any given working day during the first phase," he added.

The second phase is expected to commence in 2028, with in-patient, surgical and Accident and Emergency services located at Queen Elizabeth Hospital moving to the new facility.

After the two phases, the current Queen Elizabeth Hospital site at Kings Park will remain under the management of the Hospital Authority.

Cheung said the site would continue to provide medical services of a different nature in that area, but the final plan has yet to be confirmed by the government.

In a first for local public hospital, a cyclotron — a machine that produces radioactive contrasts that enables people to have their PET scans — will be installed in the Kai Tak Hospital.

The Hospital Authority has also set up a dedicated team to follow up on the relocation of services to the new hospital.

Staff will call patients to inform them of their new appointment details, and notifications will also be sent via text message, post and the "HA GO" app.


Edited by Tony Sabine