The Hospital Authority is finalising a career progression model for nurses, its Chairman Anthony Wu says.

Speaking at the annual Hospital Authority Convention 2008 today, Mr Wu said to ensure a strong and sustainable workforce the authority has implemented a new career progression structure for doctors and launched pilot programmes to reform doctors' work.

He said the Government has pledged to raise recurrent spending on healthcare from 15% to 17% in 2011-12. The authority is consolidating views on the healthcare reform proposals expressed by staff, Hospital Governing Committee members, patient groups and other stakeholders for submitting to the Government.

Healthcare reform

Authority Chief Executive Shane Solomon said the impact of healthcare reform should be to cut demand on the authority and create a more stable funding base for the future. The healthcare reform consultation document detailed two imbalances in Hong Kong's healthcare system: too much emphasis on acute curative care and not enough on prevention and primary care; and, too much reliance on the public hospital system.

Mr Soloman said even with a better public-private balance the authority will still have a central role providing the universal safety net. Patients will have more choices, both within the authority and the private sector.

"In the future world of healthcare financing the authority should consider offering some new choices above its core evidence-based service offering for those willing to pay more, maybe using their medical savings account or their insurance cover," Mr Solomon said, adding more public-private partnerships will emerge to offer additional new choices.

He said the authority must train and retain staff, particularly doctors and nurses, so there are more reasonable workloads and more time for communication. The authority will also reform its workforce, introduce a new casemix funding system that ties workload to patient load, and keep management overheads to a minimum so resources are directed to the frontline.

He said achieving value for society should be about working smarter and teamwork, not forcing unreasonable workloads on frontline staff.