Replies to LegCo questions

LCQ13: Statistics on public hospital inpatient discharges and deaths

Following is a question by the Hon Andrew Cheng and a written reply by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, in the Legislative Council today (March 1):

Question:

Will the Government inform this Council of the respective numbers of patients suffering from the diseases listed in Table 1 who were discharged from various clusters of public hospitals in each of the last two financial years as well as the relevant numbers of such discharges?

Reply:

Madam President,

The respective numbers of inpatient discharges and deaths relating to patients suffering from the various diseases listed in the question and broken down by hospital clusters for the years 2003-04 and 2004-05 are set out in Tables 2 and 3. There are no separate breakdowns on the figures of discharges and deaths, nor are headcount figures of such patients readily available. Cardiac Diseases, Chronic Lung Disease and Rheumatic Diseases are general terms, which do not match the disease coding currently used by the computer systems in public hospitals. To ensure the consistency and accuracy of the information presented in Tables 2 and 3, we have provided the figures for Ischaemic Heart Disease, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Osteoarthritis respectively instead.

While the figures are broken down by hospital clusters, they do not necessarily reflect the disease pattern by geographical boundaries for a number of reasons. Firstly, patients are allowed to seek medical attention in any public hospital apart from those in their own residential districts. As a matter of fact, there is a considerable amount of cross-cluster utilisation of services. Secondly, there are cases where patients seek medical attention from more than one public hospital for the same medical condition. Thirdly, the provision of certain specialised services is currently centralised in only one or a few centres, which cater for the needs of the entire territory, for better clinical outcomes and more effective deployment of expertise. Naturally, the number of discharges and deaths would be higher in the hospital clusters where these specialised centres are located. Lastly, the figures may be slightly overstated due to readmissions and the current practice of counting hospital transfers as discharges.


Ends/Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Issued at HKT 13:06

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Tables 1,2&3 on LCQ13