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In response to media enquiries about the hearing of Public Accounts Committee of Legislative Council today (December 7) on the management of outstanding medical fees of public hospitals, the spokesperson for the Hospital Authority (HA) gave the following reply:
As a responsible and accountable public organization, HA is committed to continuously improving the management of outstanding medical fees in public hospitals to ensure the optimal use of public resources. HA has always encouraged public hospitals to develop enhancement initiatives as part of their debt collection improvement process. A number of actions has already been taken or commenced to address the issues raised in the Director of Audit Report.
To further enhance the fees collection mechanism of public hospitals, a series of measures are being considered for implementation. The major ones are as follows:
- Non-Eligible Persons (NEPs) with outstanding bills will be treated only if their condition is life threatening and they will be refused all other treatments, such as specialist outpatient attendance, elective inpatient admission etc. until all bills have been settled. Application of this measure to Eligible Persons (EPs) with unpaid bills will be considered later.
- To defer submitting birth data to Birth Registry until all outstanding fees have been settled
- To introduce a surcharge / administrative charge for late payments
- To install self-serviced payment kiosks at selected venues
- To utilize Accident & Emergency Department to collect an extended range of fees and deposits
- To speed up the tendering for payment at Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) and convenience stores
- To issue bills to patients in advance for after-hours planned discharge
- To enforce request of address with proof upon admission
- To consider payment deposit from EPs
- To contract out the debt collection service and invite tenders from reputable international debt collection agencies to pursue high risk NEP bad debts
The HA will continue to explore feasible and effective initiatives in the management of medical fees collection to ensure the cost-effective use of public health care resources for needy patients.
Ends/Thursday, December 7, 2006
Issued at HKT 19:39
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