The COVID-19 pandemic has underpinned the need to raise the healthcare standard of the entire Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to the same level through greater collaboration, the head of a Guangdong-based Hong Kong-style hospital said.
Professor Lo Chung-mau, hospital chief executive at the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital and a top liver transplant expert, told China Daily that such a move will create favorable conditions for social mobility in the Bay Area, and prompt more Hong Kong talent to seek opportunities across the region.
We should aim at lifting the standard of healthcare in every place in the Bay Area. So that if I get sick, I don’t need to go back to Hong Kong. I can have the healthcare in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, and any other city in the region.
Professor Lo Chung-mau, Hospital chief executive at the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital
Lo noted that many Hong Kong people living in Guangdong province, especially the elderly who have chronic diseases, prefer to return to Hong Kong for their healthcare treatment. Yet COVID-19 has made it almost impossible despite the region’s outstanding transportation.
Cross-boundary travelers need to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine in both Hong Kong and Shenzhen as part of strict border control policies.
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Most can only seek medical treatment in the region, and many choose Lo’s hospital, the largest Hong Kong-style medical institution in the Bay Area.
Lo said during the pandemic, many hospitals have seen a drastic reduction of patients with non-respiratory diseases, in view of the infection risks. Yet his hospital has seen a 20 percent increase in cancer patients, many of whom are Hong Kong residents.
He noted that institutional differences between Hong Kong and the mainland’s medical systems have caused difficulties for them in offering their expertise to these Hong Kong patients.
Currently, Hong Kong does not share its electronic health record system with HKU-SZH and other mainland hospitals. It means that mainland agencies cannot obtain the medical history of Hong Kong patients, forcing them to repeat medical checks that have already been done in Hong Kong, Lo said.
A rainbow appears in the air over the city of Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong province, Oct 3, 2016. (PHOTO / VCG VIA CHINADAILY.COM.CN)
By mid-2019, 541,900 Hong Kong residents usually stayed in Guangdong province, including 90,200 aged above 65, the latest figures from Hong Kong’s Census and Statistics Department show.
Considering the size of the group, Lo underlined the significance of raising the Bay Area’s healthcare standard.
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“We should aim at lifting the standard of healthcare in every place in the Bay Area. So that if I get sick, I don’t need to go back to Hong Kong. I can have the healthcare in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, and any other city in the region,” Lo said.
“If we really want to develop the Bay Area, we can’t just deal with the transport. Transport alone is not sufficient. Even though you have the fastest transfers in the world, you cannot rely on transport to deal with healthcare issues.”
To achieve the goal, Lo suggested the two sides strengthen collaboration in the sharing of patient information, set a unified accreditation system of medical institutions, and extend the use of the elderly healthcare voucher program.
Currently, HKU-SZH is the only mainland agency covered in the program, a vital healthcare system for Hong Kong people. Such use is also limited to outpatient services.
Noting that his hospital is trying to extend the program to include inpatient services, Lo hopes it can be extended to other medical institutions in Shenzhen and cities in the Bay Area in the future.
