1st non-profit private teaching hospital starts construction

The construction of Hong Kong’s first non-profit private teaching hospital — the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Medical Centre — began on Thursday.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony, Secretary for Food and Health Ko Wingman said he expected the center would help ease the burden on public hospitals.

The hospital, located next to the MTR University Station, will start services in 2020.

Aiming to serve local middleclass families, the hospital plans to offer services in affordable prices. Packages will be provided in 70 percent of the services, according to the CUHK.

The move is one of the steps to build up a dual-track healthcare system in Hong Kong, Ko said.

“On the one hand, the government will continue to invest heavily in public hospitals to ensure sufficient service capacity,” Ko said. “On the other hand, we also need a reasonable expansion of private hospitals to alleviate pressure on the public sector.”

Starting from the fifth year of its operation, the HK$6.3 billion medical center will take over 17,600 specialist outpatient cases and 6,600 ambulatory surgery cases referred from public hospitals in New Territories East Cluster, such as the Prince of Wales Hospital. This is expected to take up 10 percent of the total designed capacity.

Medical costs will remain the same as those in the public hospitals for referred patients, according to the CUHK.

The 14-storey CUHK Medical Centre with a construction area of over 100,000 square meters will provide 619 beds — 516 for inpatients and 103 day places. In the first year of operation, the hospital will provide 90 inpatient beds. More will come with an annual increase of some 100 beds until 2026, according to the CUHK.

Providing a total of 28 surgery rooms and 16 specialist medical centers, the hospital’s clinical services will range from general medicine, general surgery, orthopedics and gynecology in the first year, said Fung Hong, executive director of the hospital.

The arrangement was made after consideration of the limited number of medical staff, said Fung. He estimated that some 190 doctors and 600 nurses are required to work in full operation.

In the first year of operation, the hospital will recruit 45 doctors and 100 nurses.

Meanwhile, the CUHK hoped to apply its medical finding and technology in the center, said CUHK ViceChancellor and President Joseph Sung Jao-yiu.

They include NanoKnife surgery to kill cancerous cells and liquid biopsy technology, the latter being a medical breakthrough by the university’s associate dean (research) of medicine, Dennis Lo Yukming. The technology applies DNA sequencing techniques to early-stage cancer detection.

The hospital applied for a government loan of HK$4 billion and received HK$1.3 billion donations from the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

The other HK$1 billion of the budget was covered by the university’s reserve fund and other donations. The government loan will be interest-free for the first five years. After that, the hospital will make repayments at a floating rate for the next 10 years.

Students swear an oath as they join the Communist Party of China at China University of Petroleum’s campus in Qingdao, Shandong province, in April.

countries and regions, including the United States, Australia and New Zealand, on the exchange of financial information, according to People’s Bank of China, the central bank.

China also intends to begin negotiations with more Western countries, such as the US and France, for bilateral treaties on sharing the assets that corrupt Chinese fugitives have sent overseas, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In October, China signed the first such treaty with Canada.

Jiang Laiyong, an antigraft researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that some stipulations in existing international agreements on asset recovery are too abstract to be implemented.

In addition, many international financial institutions are led by developed countries, “which places developing countries at a disadvantage in negotiations,” he said.

Jiang suggested that developing countries like China make better use of international platforms and meetings, such as APEC and G20, to voice their stance and policies to gain wider support.

China launched a massive anti-corruption campaign in late 2012, shortly after the new leadership was elected.

To capture economic fugitives hiding abroad, the country has set up the Central Anti-Corruption Coordination Group, led by the CCDI, and launched the Skynet program to capture corrupt officials who fled abroad.

Liu said that in recent years, the number of newly added economic crimes fugitives has fallen. “Fewer people are trying to escape overseas,” he said.

He attributed the decline to the tightened management of officials’ passports, measures taken to prevent suspects from leaving the country and the success in bringing back fugitives from overseas, which serves as a deterrence.

Contact the writers at Zhangyan1@ chinadaily.com.cn