The Government announced that it officially established the Primary Healthcare Commission (PHC Commission) today under the Health Bureau to succeed the work of the current Primary Healthcare Office.

Commissioner for Primary Healthcare Pang Fei-chau will lead the commission, taking charge of overseeing the service supply, standard setting, quality assurance and personnel training related to primary healthcare.

The PHC Commission will plan primary healthcare services and allocate resources with the support of the Strategic Purchasing Office to strengthen the primary healthcare services as a whole.

The Government will explore the formulation of new legislation to give the PHC Commission authority and statutory powers such as defining primary healthcare service providers, auditing and monitoring service quality of relevant personnel, setting service standards applicable to private primary healthcare service providers and establishing a quality assurance mechanism for the services.

The commission will take forward key tasks in three areas through a more comprehensive, co-ordinated, systematic and quality-assured strategy.

• Co-ordinating primary healthcare services and enhancing cross-sectoral and inter-organisational co-ordination: the commission will review the service scope of general out-patient clinics with the Hospital Authority, discuss with the Department of Health in reorganising the services of Woman Health Centres and Elderly Health Centres and strengthen the role of District Health Centres (DHCs) as primary healthcare service hubs and case managers. It will also plan services and allocate resources through strategic purchasing and explore the establishment of a community drug formulary and community pharmacy programme.

• Setting standards and agreed protocol-driven care pathway to ensure primary healthcare services quality: the commission will establish a more systematic mechanism to manage patient referrals in accordance with an agreed protocol-driven care pathway, connect DHCs and consolidate and share data through the eHealth. In future, eHealth's eReferral function will support primary healthcare service providers to discharge case management and gatekeeping role through the real-time and secured electronic referral system.

• Reinforcing the training for primary healthcare professionals: the commission will develop the Primary Care Register to cover all primary healthcare professionals, and will set qualification and training requirements for the healthcare professionals enlisted on the register to keep improving the quality of primary healthcare services. It will also collaborate with academic/training institutions to design and provide trainings for primary healthcare professionals and explore incentives to attract healthcare professionals to pursue careers in primary healthcare.

Secretary for Health Prof Lo Chung-mau explained that the PHC Commission, being the organisation responsible for the primary healthcare development, will build on past achievements and continue the efforts in co-ordinating and managing the primary healthcare services provided by public and private sectors, setting standards and establishing quality assurance mechanisms in a more comprehensive manner.

It will integrate and co-ordinate the primary healthcare services provided by various parties, including the Department of Health, the Hospital Authority, non-governmental organisations and the private healthcare sector. It will also develop new service and management models for fostering the all-round consolidation and promotion of primary healthcare development, he emphasised.

"The Department of Health will continue to maintain its public health functions in planning the overall public health strategy, as well as executing its regulatory and enforcement roles, covering enhancement of the approval and registration mechanism for regulating drugs and medical devices.

“The Hospital Authority will focus on the delivery of public hospital services and the provision of relevant medical and rehabilitation services to the public. Under the policies formulated by the PHC Commission, the authority will focus on providing an essential safety net to the socially disadvantaged, in particular those who lack the means to pay,” Prof Lo said.

“Such division of work will facilitate the positioning of primary healthcare as the foundation of the pyramid of healthcare services, and the gatekeeping the delivery of specialised secondary and tertiary healthcare services in hospital and healthcare institution settings," he added.

The Government also set up the Primary Healthcare Committee, concurrently chaired by Pang Fei-chau, to advise the commission from multiple perspectives. The committee’s non-official members comprise professionals of family medicine, Chinese medicine, dentistry and other professional sectors.