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Lo Chung-mau: 2026/27 Govt Healthcare Recurrent Spending Budget HKD118.9B, Up 4% YoY
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Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau said at a special meeting of the Legislative Council Finance Committee today (13th) that the governments recurrent expenditure budget on healthcare for 2026/27 is HKD118.9 billion, representing a YoY increase of 4% from the revised estimate for 2025/26 and accounting for 19.8% of total government recurrent expenditure. Of this, recurrent funding allocated to the Hospital Authority for 2026/27 amounts to HKD101.8 billion, up 2.8% from the revised estimate of HKD99.0 billion for 2025/26, to meet growing service demand. Lo said key new initiatives to be implemented by the Hospital Authority include reform of public healthcare charges to strengthen protection for patients who are "underprivileged, urgent, serious and critical"; enhancing both quantity and quality of services, including the addition of about 200 hospital beds; shortening waiting times for specialist outpatient services; establishing stroke centres and chest pain centres; and continuing development of smart wards, smart clinics and smart pharmacies. Regarding regulation of private healthcare, the government plans to submit subsidiary legislation to the Legislative Council within this year to enhance fee transparency. He added that the first-phase "primary evaluation" mechanism for new drug registration was implemented in March this year. In 2H26, the government will introduce a bill to establish the Hong Kong Centre for Medical Products Regulation, with a target to set up the centre before year-end, alongside legislative proposals for the regulation of medical devices. In addition, the "International Institute of Clinical Trials" will be established within 2027, while the "Real-World Study and Application Centre" will develop a "Greater Bay Area Real-World Data Platform". On healthcare manpower, Lo noted that Hong Kong continues to face an overall shortage of healthcare professionals, particularly in the public sector. For example, there are currently more than 3,500 nursing vacancies in public healthcare institutions, representing a vacancy rate of about 10%. Going forward, the government will continue a dual-track approach of local training and appropriate recruitment of non-locally trained healthcare professionals to ensure sufficient manpower. It also supports the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in establishing a third medical school, with land and resources reserved for developing a new campus and integrated medical teaching and research hospital in Ngau Tam Mei, targeting the admission of the first cohort of 50 students in the 2028/29 academic year. Lo also said the government will extend the Elderly Health Care Voucher Greater Incentive Pilot Scheme to end-2028, involving additional expenditure of HKD1 billion. In principle, elderly persons who accumulate HKD1,000 or more in voucher spending on designated primary healthcare services within the same year will receive an additional HKD500 health care voucher incentive. Separately, preliminary data show that Hong Kongs smoking rate declined from 9.1% in 2023 to 8.5% in 2025, a record low. The number of daily smokers has decreased by nearly 100,000 compared with the pre-pandemic level in 2019, reflecting significant effectiveness of tobacco control efforts. The government will continue to implement various tobacco control measures and advance the five-year "eHealth+" plan to build an integrated healthcare information infrastructure covering data interoperability, service delivery and process management, creating a territory-wide digital health network connected to the Greater Bay Area. (hc/da) This article was automatically translated by AI, the Chinese version should be considered the authoritative version. AASTOCKS.com Limited does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness and accepts no liability for any damages or losses arising from the use of this translation. Auto-translated by AI AASTOCKS Financial News |
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