Govt Defends Plans To Attract Outside Doctors

Health Secretary Sophia Chan has defended a proposal to let Hong Kong residents trained elsewhere as doctors practise more easily in the SAR, saying it's a much-needed and timely change to ease a manpower shortage.

The proposal would allow doctors who received training outside the territory to get full registration in Hong Kong after working five years in the public sector, without the need for them to pass a local licensing exam.

Currently, doctors trained elsewhere can work in the public sector, and are required to take the licensing exam if they want to switch to the private sector.

The medical sector says it is worried that the relaxation would lower the quality of healthcare services in the city.

At a Legco health services panel meeting on Friday, medical sector lawmaker Pierre Chan also accused authorities of making a political decision when raising the proposal.

He said he doubts whether the plan could really relieve pressure on public hospitals, as doctors trained elsewhere would choose to work at Hong Kong's two medical schools instead, and enter the private market afterwards.

But Sophia Chan insisted the government is just keeping up with the times.

"If you look at other jurisdictions, in fact a very small number of them would require doctors to take the licensing examination before they can be registered. There are also different pathways to enable non-locally trained doctors to practice," she said.

"When it comes to quality, it will not just be about the examination, whether they pass it or not. They would also have to have experience working in the public sector. There would also have to be appraisals from the employing institutions, the overall working time and years of experience, and on top of that, they have to be registered doctors already before they come to serve in Hong Kong," she said.

Under the new proposal, the doctors must be permanent residents who are registered practitioners elsewhere, and graduates from 100 medical schools recognised by Hong Kong – with this list to be decided by a designated committee.

Meanwhile, pro-Beijing lawmakers, including the Liberal Party's Tommy Cheung, said the government should relax the criteria further to include non-Hong Kong residents.

"The kind of specialty doctors we need, it can be non-permanent residents. Also they may not be studying in those schools that eventually they decide [to recognise], but they are practising in New York, in very well-known public hospitals... Why do you prohibit these practitioners from coming back, simply because their medical schools may not be the ones you say?" Cheung said.

The proposed legislation is expected to be tabled to Legco in the second quarter.