Working OT To Aid The Elderly

A group of more than 30 benevolent medical practitioners are spending their spare time consulting elderly home residents.

These private doctors, chiropractors, dieticians and dentists are part of social enterprise DoctorNow NEEDS, established in 2016.

Dr Evelyn Chan has been part of the team for more than a year and spends about 10 hours a month tending to elderly home residents. She has also treated dozens of patients during this winter flu season.

She said her work at DoctorNow NEEDS is meaningful.

"Doing general consultations at the clinics, I can see that many elderly defaulted their follow-up because they have difficulties coming to the clinic.

"They may not have family members to come with them or they may have moving difficulties, maybe wheelchair-bound or sometimes even bed-bound, so I thought that visiting them is actually a good idea."

Easier alternative

Octogenarian Madam Fong lives in an elderly home and has been treated by a doctor from the social enterprise.

"I get colds quite frequently. It is quite inconvenient for the caretaker to take me to a clinic every time.

"The doctor comes to our place and treats us after we joined DoctorNow NEEDS. It is much more convenient."

Each consultation costs $380 which includes five days' medicine which is delivered to the elderly home. Seniors can pay the fee by using the Elderly Health Care Voucher.

Follow-up consultations are conducted over video applications.

Madam Fong lives in one of more than 70 elderly homes which uses the service. Its superintendent Yuki Choi said residents have been able to consult visiting doctors whenever they have symptoms since joining the service nearly a year ago, easing the burden on care workers.

"We have to deploy a care worker to escort our residents to the clinic. We charge them $300 each time. Some family members are not willing to pay the fee. They usually decide to not bring the resident to the doctor immediately."

Medical potential

Former public hospital doctor Dr Wilson Fung founded DoctorNow NEEDS to harness the potential of private medical practitioners.

"Our mission is to decrease the emergency admission rate. We want to decrease the hospitalisation rate and we want to minimise the opportunity cost of those elderly seeking medical care."

Dr Fung hopes to recruit more doctors and reach out to more elderly homes.

To support the use of the Elderly Health Care Voucher, Financial Secretary Paul Chan announced in his 2018-19 Budget that elderly residents can accumulate $5,000 worth of unspent healthcare vouchers from the current $4,000 to allow them greater flexibility.

An additional one-off $1,000 worth of vouchers will be provided to eligible seniors.

Also, in her Policy Address last October, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the Government will enhance co-ordination among various medical and social sectors, and strengthen district-level primary healthcare services.

The measures can help raise people's disease awareness, enhance their self-care and home-care abilities, and reduce demand for hospitalisation.