Policy Address

Enhancing Primary Care Services

Working Group on Primary Care

86.       The proposal to enhance primary care services received broad public support during the healthcare reform consultation.  We will allocate more resources in the coming few years to implement this proposal.  This will include introducing basic primary care service models focusing on preventive care and a primary care register based on the family-doctor concept.  The Secretary for Food and Health will set up a Working Group on Primary Care to take forward this initiative.  Members will include healthcare professionals from the public and private sectors.

Community Health Centre

87.       To provide comprehensive primary services in local communities, and to cater for the healthcare needs of the elderly and the under-privileged in particular, we will explore a primary care delivery model — the “community health centre” — to co-ordinate the efforts of different service units in the delivery of primary care services.  Depending on the different needs of communities, service units could include general out-patient services, outreach community healthcare services, nurse clinic services, allied health services, and specialist services for relatively simple cases.  We will explore the feasibility of delivering services under the community health centre model through tri-partite collaboration among the public sector, the private sector and NGOs, with the public sector responsible for service co-ordination.  Under the new service delivery model, low-income families and the under-privileged will continue to be taken care of by subsidised public healthcare services.

 

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