The Hospital Authority is improving the management of outstanding medical fees in public hospitals to ensure the optimal use of public resources.

Responding to media enquiries about the Legislative Council Public Accounts Committee hearing today, the authority said it encourages public hospitals to develop enhancement initiatives as part of their debt-collection improvement process. It has already taken or launched a number of actions to address the issues raised in a Director of Audit Report.

To enhance the fee-collection mechanism, a series of measures are being considered. The major ones are:

* non-eligible people with outstanding bills will be treated only if their condition is life threatening and they will be refused all other treatments, such as specialist outpatient attendance, until all bills have been settled. Application of this measure to eligible people with unpaid bills will be considered later;

* to defer submitting data to the Birth Registry until all outstanding fees have been settled;

* to introduce a surcharge or administrative charge for late payments;

* to install self-serviced payment kiosks at selected venues;

* to use accident and emergency departments to collect an extended range of fees and deposits;

* to speed up the tendering for payment at automatic teller machines and convenience stores;

* to issue bills to patients in advance for after-hours planned discharge;

* to enforce request of address with proof upon admission;

* to consider payment deposits from eligible people;

* to contract out the debt-collection service and invite tenders from reputable international debt-collection agencies to pursue high-risk debts from non-eligible people.