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Stakeholders’ voices

Doctors have to adhere to evidence-based guidelines and protocols
when giving treatments in the Hospital Authority, but some private
physicians switch between ultra-expensive medications every two
weeks, and their side effects will undermine patients’ quality of life.

Academic

Apart from the Hospital Authority, there are also other service
providers offering different chronic disease screening and
management programmes in the market. It is therefore hard
for any single organisation, if not the Government, to
coordinate and organise these services holistically.

Public service provider

Subtheme 4.3 – Potential limitations of PPPs should be addressed. While agreeing with
the general direction of promoting public and private sector integration with strategic
purchasing, various stakeholders questioned PPPs’ long-term effectiveness due to
the limited scope of current programmes. Although wide gaps remain between
the public and private sectors, such as imbalanced utilisation patterns and disjointed service
standards, stakeholders acknowledged PPP as an interim solution especially during peak
seasons or emergency situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stakeholders’ voices

In short term, I think it PPPs is a good idea, [but] I think it doesn’t
really solve the fundamental problem. People would still want to
maintain their feet in the public system, because they worry that
they will be excluded.
Academic

PPP in the context of primary care has limited
resources and can only [provide] a finite amount
of coverage. What happens beyond this?
Academic

PPPs are especially useful… Paying for services contracted to
the private sector is a short-term solution to the current problem.

Patient group representative

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