Hong Kong’s public hospitals aim to shorten waiting times in accident and emergency departments for the third most urgent group of patients following fee adjustments that will be announced in weeks.
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The Hospital Authority said it hoped to meet its service target of treating 90 per cent of urgent patients in A&E, currently triaged as category three, within 30 minutes, instead of the 76.6 per cent in 2024.
Patients are divided into five categories according to their condition, with the top tier labelled as “critical”, followed by “emergency”, “urgent”, “semi-urgent” and “non-urgent”.
“We have had to dedicate some resources looking after patients from categories four and five [of less urgent cases], which is why we couldn’t tend to some of the [category three patients] within half an hour,” said Dr Michael Wong Lap-gate, director of quality and safety at the authority.
Wong stressed that hospital staff met the service target of treating 100 per cent of the most urgent patients – category one or critical – immediately. They exceeded the 95 per cent target – reaching 97.1 per cent – for treating patients of emergency condition within 15 minutes.
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“A significant proportion of patients who come to us are semi-urgent or non-urgent. The setting up of A&E was to handle patients who are critical, emergency or urgent,” said Dr Axel Siu Yuet-chung, chairman of the A&E coordinating committee at the authority.
According to the authority, 55.6 per cent – or 1,110,242 – of nearly 2 million first-time patients at A&E last year were triaged as semi- or non-urgent cases, with the government considering changing people’s habits through adjusting fees to ensure more resources are dedicated to those in urgent need.