Legislators Plan To Bypass Medical Council

Lawmakers from both sides of the political divide are looking to wrest control from the Medical Council, after it rejected all options to make it easier for foreign doctors to work here at a meeting earlier this month.

Democratic Party legislator Helena Wong said if it still fails to back a deal at a meeting next month, she may table a private member's bill to amend the Medical Registration Ordinance to allow the government to handle the matter. Her idea was echoed by DAB councillor Elizabeth Quat.

The founder of think tank HKGolden50 Franklin Lam, who's also a board member of the Hospital Authority, agreed that the Medical Council needs to be reformed.

"Almost everybody in Hong Kong, 7.4 million people, who will fall ill, who do fall ill regularly, are against 14,000 doctors. That is a simple case of whose interests are we finally after? It has to be the patients!", he said.

"We shouldn't even delay, I hope the Medical Council can fix itself. Experience in foreign jurisdictions in developed countries has always been that it's top-down... Self-regulation is already an obsolete concept, for almost every jurisdiction in the medical field in the world."

At the council meeting on April 3, four proposals were reportedly discussed, including dropping the need for specialists trained overseas to first carry out internships, as long as they have passed the council's licensing examination and are willing to serve in public hospitals for at least three years.

The chairman of the council, Joseph Lau, said while all 29 members present at the meeting agreed that there is an acute shortage of doctors in public hospitals, a majority of them voted against the plans.