Patients at Hong Kong’s public hospitals and clinics may need to pay more for their prescriptions, with authorities reviewing the current heavily subsidised HK$15 (US$1.92) fee for a 16-week supply of medicine.
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Without disclosing details of the fee adjustment review, Dr Simon Tang Yiu-hang, director of cluster services at the Hospital Authority, said the aim was not to cut costs but to boost resources for cancer and rare-disease patients in need of expensive, patented drugs.
“If each patient can fork out a bit more when paying for their drugs, the Hospital Authority’s pie will grow,” Tang said.
“This will be very beneficial for our operations because we will have more resources to introduce clinically effective but expensive drugs to the drug formulary.
“But how much more are you willing to pay? I’m leaving this for the public to discuss.”
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The government currently covers 92 per cent of the authority’s drug costs, with patients only paying HK$15 for a 16-week supply of medication at specialist outpatient clinics.