Our Hands Are Tied Too: Private Hospitals

The head of the Private Hospitals Association, William Ho, said on Wednesday that private hospitals are already trying their very best to help ease the burden of the Hospital Authority by offering as many beds as they possibly can to take in non-Covid, public patients.

He made the comment on an RTHK radio programme, a day after the association’s 13 member hospitals together decided to allocate 1,000 beds to take patients transferred from public hospitals.

The Ta Kung Pao newspaper quoted Hospital Authority chairman Henry Fan as saying he was disappointed with the association's offer, saying private hospitals should instead set aside 2,500 beds, or around half of their overall capacity.

Responding to Fan, Ho said there's no need for finger-pointing, and it's important to put oneself in other people’s shoes.

He pointed out that if the majority of their beds are taken up by public patients, then private patients would be left out and they might in turn be forced to return to public hospitals to seek treatment.

"For example, if we can actually operate 60 percent of beds, you take up 50 percent, can we only have 10 percent of capacity left for private patients? Is that realistic? If that's the government's decision we can't really object to it," Ho said.

"Patients can't go anywhere if they don't have Covid - they will just go back to [public] A&E departments in the end, right?"

Ho stressed that private hospitals currently only operate at less than two-thirds of their capacity because many of their staff have come down with Covid or have gone into quarantine.

He added that anti-Covid drugs are not available at private hospitals and their clinics yet.

Meanwhile, the president of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists, William Chui, called on Covid patients to provide their doctors with a list of medication they had been taking, to help doctors decide whether to prescribe them with the newly available antiviral drug.

Chui told RTHK that the Pfizer Covid pills may cause harmful reactions if taken with other prescription medication.