Opinion | How Hong Kong public hospitals can ease overcrowding without turning to the private sector

Such terrible time lags can become drivers of disease themselves, due to the failure to take preventive steps and treat patients within an appropriate time frame. Drawing on studies in health care management, one of my areas of research, we should push for other ways to improve the system’s efficiency.

First, we need strategies that shift more doctors into the public sector. Turning to the private sector pool is a commonly touted idea, but relying on private health care creates bigger problems in the long run. Research shows that private health care systems like the US’ are prone to overdiagnosis in the quest for greater profits. Overdiagnosis engenders paranoia in patients and the tendency to rush to a doctor for every minor ailment, which takes up precious time that doctors could use to tend to more serious cases.

Instead of turning to the private sector, Hong Kong must focus on channelling more doctors into public health care, subsidising increased quotas for medical students at publicly funded universities and increasing the number of medical residency placements in public hospitals. Even if this means patients won’t see the same resident doctor more than once, more residencies would provide public hospitals with additional manpower. Some studies in the US have found that, after adjusting for the severity of cases, teaching hospitals have better survival rates and quality of care than non-teaching hospitals.