Elderly Hongkongers will be able to use healthcare vouchers at 7 more hospitals and dental clinics in Greater Bay Area from third quarter at earliest
“Apart from the two current facilities in Shenzhen, we actively explored cities including Dongguan, Guangzhou, the Nansha cooperation zone and Zhongshan.”
The five newly added medical institutions comprise two branches of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and the Nansha cooperation zone, Zhongshan Chenxinghai Hospital, Dongguan Tungwah Hospital and Shenzhen New Frontier United Family Hospital.
Two dental centres in Shenzhen will also be included in the scheme. They are the Aikangjian Stomatological Hospital near the Lo Wu border checkpoint and William Chu clinic near the Shenzhen Bay crossing.
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Deputy Secretary for Health Eddie Lee Lik-kong said eight criteria were used in selecting healthcare facilities, including location, service quality, operational experience, service scope, service capacity, knowledge about the elderly healthcare voucher scheme, level of charges and their strengths.
He said the facilities were not allowed to increase service charges as a result of the scheme and mainland Chinese authorities were strictly monitoring them. Charges were likely to be cheaper than for similar services in Hong Kong, he said, citing a reference price of HK$309 on average per case at the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital.
Beijing unveiled its bay area blueprint five years ago to turn the region into a hi-tech powerhouse by 2035. The region of more than 86 million people covers Hong Kong, Macau and nine Guangdong cities.
Healthcare specialists cool to expanded Hong Kong elderly voucher scheme
The Elderly Health Care Voucher Pilot Scheme was first launched in 2009 and became a recurrent programme in 2014, aiming to provide financial incentives for people to opt for private medical services.
People aged 65 or over who hold a Hong Kong identity card or Certificate of Exemption issued by the Immigration Department are eligible for the scheme.
The current annual voucher is HK$2,000 per person with the amount allowed to accumulate to up to HK8,000. Any unused amount can be carried over to the following years.
In 2015, a pilot scheme was introduced for eligible residents to use the vouchers at the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital in Shenzhen for outpatient services at designated clinics or departments.
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The scheme was regularised in 2019 and further extended to cover outpatient services at the hospital’s Huawei Li Zhi Yuan Community Health Service Centre last April.
The number of people seeking medical services in Shenzhen using the vouchers has increased over the years, with visits rising from 2,287 in 2015 to 38,462 in 2023.
More than 15,700 people have used the vouchers, spending HK$51,794,000.
The Health Bureau earlier said it had invited mainland authorities to recommend candidates for the scheme and the Department of Health had conducted market research on the facilities operated by Hong Kong medical institutions in the bay area.