Public hospital operations in Kowloon are set for a major shake-up when Kai Tak Hospital opens in October, with the role of Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) changing and Kwong Wah Hospital taking on a bigger emergency role, Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau said on Friday.

Speaking on a radio programme, Lo said the opening of Kai Tak Hospital – a 2,400-bed facility he described as Hong Kong’s largest acute general hospital – would allow most of QEH’s inpatient services to move there.

The existing QEH in King's Park has 1,940 beds. Kai Tak will open in phases, starting with family medicine and specialist outpatient services, particularly oncology.

With QEH set to stop providing 24-hour emergency services, its site will become an integrated ambulatory care hospital. Lo said the first phase of the conversion at the QEH site would begin next year, offering day procedures, diagnostics and treatments such as cataract surgery, CT and MRI imaging, and radiotherapy.

The ambulatory care hospital is expected to handle about 5,500 cataract cases a year, Lo said, a move that could further reduce waiting times. The cataract waiting list has already dropped from more than 70,000 to about 64,000, while the median waiting time has fallen from 37 months to 31.

Lo said that the changes would fix a long-standing problem in Kowloon, where QEH and Kwong Wah Hospital had been too close together, complicating patient triage.

"Now, as Kai Tak Hospital begins to provide services, this is a very good opportunity to properly sort out emergency hospital services across the whole of Kowloon," he said.

"After Kwong Wah Hospital’s expansion, its accident and emergency department is three times larger than before, and 40 emergency beds have also been added. These figures show that our plan is for Kwong Wah Hospital’s accident and emergency department to cope with demand from the nearby area."

Kai Tak Hospital’s accident and emergency department will also be three times larger than QEH’s, Lo said, enabling it to serve many more patients.

The new day hospital at the QEH site will serve all six of Hong Kong’s public hospital clusters, not only Kowloon, Lo said. But he cautioned that patients with conditions such as heart disease or other risks may not be suitable for day surgery.

More day services, including endoscopy and eye injections, could be added later.

Lo said services would adhere to the healthcare needs of the population, with the second hospital development plan to be announced in due course.


Edited by Aaron Tam