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The Doctors Working Group of the Hospital Authority (HA) has unanimously reached an agreement-in-principle today (Tuesday, 20 June) on the compensation package for the doctors﷿ claim regarding the performance of on-call duties during rest days, statutory holidays and public holidays.
The Chairman of HA, Mr Anthony Wu, said he is really glad to see that the Doctors Working Group, after several months of hard work and commitment, is able to come up with a final solution which is acceptable to both the management and the doctor representatives.
䩕On behalf of the Authority Board, I would like to commend the unceasing efforts and also the mutual understanding of both sides in contributing to the agreement which has resolved the long outstanding issues once and for all in compensating all the doctors with regards to rest days, statutory holidays and public holidays in accordance with the High Court judgment delivered in March this year. The Board is soon to deliberate on the details of the agreement reached today.蒅
Mr Wu said the deal also marks the first significant step of HA in its determination and resolution to improve the work hours and career opportunity of frontline doctors in the coming years.
The Chief Executive of HA, Mr Shane Solomon, who is also the Chairman of the Working Group, said the agreement was reached after eight rounds of intensive and open exchanges between the management and over 20 members representing the major doctors﷿ unions and frontline doctors spanning from Residents to Consultant ranks.
䩕The issues involved in fact are quite complex and there is also a lack of complete sets of documented quantitative data. Hence, the input of an independent actuarial consultant was required as we could only estimate the ranges of total recompense for the doctors basing on available data and assumption-based mathematical modeling.蒅
According to Mr Solomon, there are several agreed principles by the Working Group throughout its deliberation on the issues. These include:
* Devising a simple-to-administer and easy-to-understand recompense apportion model
* Basing mainly on frequency of specialty groups working on the rest days/ statutory holidays/public holidays and the estimated level of compensation already granted
䩕Under the principle of fairness, the recompense for the 4,600 serving doctors in HA has been worked out in a broad-banded approach depending on the specialties they are working in and also their rank. The highest recompense offered has reached $222,000. The compensation will be made in a one-off payment.
䩕The total amount of recompense is estimated to be $629 million. It should be noted that over 70 percent of the total recompense would be for Residents/Medical Officer rank. We hope that the acceptance rate will be reaching the target of over 95 percent of eligible doctors.蒅
䩕We have started to communicate to the staff concerned on the compensation package which has just been unanimously agreed by the Working Group today. It is planned that the implementation details will be further deliberated with an aim to settle the issues within a few months,蒅 Mr Solomon remarked.
Ends/Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Issued at HKT 19:31
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