Page 191 - 20211214_OHKF_Health_Finance_Research_Report_E (1)

While these costs meaningfully drive the total expenditure for the Scheme in the initial years
of programme implementation, we are also cognizant that these costs encompass critical
components of the Scheme, which includes the financial incentive for participation—the
annual intervention subsidy of HKD 3,486 per patient and participation subsidy for providers.
The subsidy is intended to incentivise patients to proactively seek healthcare services to
better maintain their health and prevent deterioration of their conditions. We expect that
during the actual implementation of the Scheme, the expenditure on the intervention subsidy
(valued at HKD 3,486/patient) will overlap with spending on treatment and management of
DM for individuals without complications (valued at HKD 5,950/patient for patients between
the ages of 45–54 years; subsequently valued at HKD 9,538/patient and HKD 15,383 for
ages 55–64 and ages 65–74, respectively). While the intervention subsidy is intended to allow
patients to access a wider variety of services not exclusively limited to healthcare provision, it
remains likely that patients may want to utilise these funds for healthcare purposes, which
may subsequently overlap with the treatment and management costs that the Government
can expect to spend on an annual basis. As such, health system spending on the Scheme is
likely to be lower than projected in the model.

Furthermore, we may expect that during the initial years of the Scheme’s implementation,
many patients may be found with DM and underlying symptoms that have yet to be treated in
a sustained manner. To this end, we can expect that costs may be initially high to enrol these
patients into treatment and management Schemes, and therefore deviate from the projected
spending levels in the BIA. Nonetheless, as these patients are eased into the Scheme, their
costs can be expected to plateau as they learn to better manage their diagnosis and stave
off worsening symptoms. The initial increase in expenditures due to patients with complications
joining the Scheme is not seen within our projections, given the nature of our cost figures
being representative of average expenditures over a five-year period, and thereby
“smoothing” the possible outliers in healthcare expenditures.

Figure 4.14

Total expenditure per scenario to date

50,000
Expenditure in HKD millions 30,000
40,000

20,000
10,000

0
2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034 2035 2036 2037 2038 2039 2040 2041 2042 2043 2044 2045 2046 2047 2048 2049 2050 2051

Base Scenario Total Spending
Scenario 1 Total Spending
Scenario 2 Total Spending

189