The Hospital Authority (HA) expects that programs allowing mainland doctors and other medical professionals to work in Hong Kong can be regularized and that it can build on the success of an existing program that has already permitted 10 doctors from the Greater Bay Area to work in the Special Administrative Region.
Over 80 healthcare professionals arrived in HK in April under the Greater Bay Area Healthcare Talents Visiting Programmes, and are working at public hospitals in departments, including those for infectious diseases and cardiology.
Kuang Yu-kun from the GBA, who is working in the Medicine and Geriatrics department at the Princess Margaret Hospital, said mainland hospitals can learn from HK's comprehensive system of managing patients' medical records.
The deputy chief of service of the department, Yeung Yiu-cheong, said local doctors have been able to learn more about the mainland's medical system through the programs.
A chief manager with the HA, Gladys Kwan, said she hopes such programs can be expanded and regularized.
"This program actually gives us a very good opportunity to have collaboration or professional exchanges at a clinical level, so that we [can learn their skills]. In return, they also know how the system works in HK, so I think this is a win-win situation," she said.
"Most important is how we make use of these experts as well as the manpower to support our public system at the moment when we are facing quite a significant shortage of manpower," according to her.
Kwan added that these programs should be two-way, as local doctors can benefit from working in mainland hospitals.
Officials earlier said the second batch of healthcare professionals under the scheme is expected to arrive in HK at the end of this year at the earliest.
Comment