The number of patients in Hong Kong who received medical fee waivers has jumped to over 264,000 in the first half of the year, up nearly 19-fold from the 14,000 beneficiaries recorded for the whole year of 2025, the Hospital Authority said on Sunday.

A spokesperson for the HA said in a statement that, since the reform of public healthcare fees and charges took effect on Jan 1, it had received a total of 289,799 applications for medical fee waivers, of which 264,087 were approved as of June 30.

“The approval rate exceeded 90 percent, which is nearly 19 times of approximately 14,000 patients who received medical fee waivers in the full year prior to the reform,” the statement reads.

The spokesperson said the expansion of the medical fee waiver mechanism under the reform has increased the potential number of beneficiaries from about 900,000 to approximately 2 million.

“The public healthcare fees and charges reform, which has been implemented for half a year, has not only effectively enhanced efficiency and reduced waste, but also significantly strengthened protection for poor, acute, serious, and critical patients,” the spokesperson said.

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Excluding those who have been benefiting from medical fee waivers both before and after the reform, there were “already about 900,000 patient attendances benefited from the enhanced medical fee waiver mechanism in the first half of this year, with the vast majority being fully waived,” the spokesperson added.

The HA had also introduced an annual cap on fees and charges of HK$10,000 ($1,275), which is not subject to financial assessment, for all Hong Kong residents.

As of June 30, for the 10,595 patients whose applications were approved, all other eligible medical fees for the remainder of this financial year will be fully waived, the HA said.

The reform also relaxed the financial assessment criteria for Samaritan Fund (SF) subsidies, strengthening drug and medical device support for critical patients, including those from middle-income families.

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Compared with the same period in the first half of last year, the approved subsidy amounts for drug and non-drug items under the SF increased by about 22 percent and 10 percent to HK$1.28 billion and HK$220 million, respectively.

The service and efficiency of Accident and Emergency Departments (A&Es) have also been enhanced, with a total of 913,248 attendances recorded across the 18 A&Es under the HA in the first six months of 2026.

Among them, priority treatment for critical and emergency cases fully met the target, and these 44,522 attendances were fully exempted from A&E fees under the new fees and charges mechanism, the HA said.

The proportion of urgent cases treated within 30 minutes meeting the service pledge target increased from 81.4 percent to 88.5 percent, with the average waiting time reduced from 23 to 20 minutes.

Attendances for semi-urgent and non-urgent cases decreased by about 10 percent, with non-urgent cases dropping by about 20 percent, the HA spokesperson said.

“These results reflect the positive impact of the fees and charges reform in guiding patients to use healthcare services appropriately, reducing default appointments and resource wastage, and improving the utilization efficiency of public healthcare resources,” the spokesperson added.