The government pointed out in a document submitted by the Legislative Council’s Special Finance Committee that the total number of visits to government dental clinics by civil servants and eligible persons last year was more than 500,000, and the revised budget for related services was about HK$910 million.
In the face of the loss of dentists and the increase in waiting time, the authorities launched the “Shenzhen Pilot Program for Dental Services” in February this year, allowing eligible persons participating in the program to return to designated institutions in the Mainland to receive a teeth cleaning and oral imaging (X-ray) service. The number of participants is estimated to be about 2,000, involving an expenditure of about HK$1.1 million.
Currently, the government provides dental services to serving and retired civil servants and their dependents through more than 40 civil service clinics and dental clinics, while the general public can only receive free emergency dental services (i.e. “dental street cases”) at specific times each week through 11 dental clinics under the Department of Health. The services only include the treatment of acute dental problems and tooth loss.
The 11 clinics only cover 10 districts in Hong Kong, and each clinic only provides about 40 consultation quotas each time. In the past, elderly people with toothaches even had to “queue up all night” to get a quota. The authorities launched an online registration system at the end of last year in the hope of improving the situation. However, 1,769 people registered in the first three days after the launch of the plan, of which only 272 were selected, accounting for only 15% of the total.
The government said that the total number of visits to dental clinics by civil servants and eligible persons in the past three years was 585,000, 530,000 and 502,000 respectively. The waiting time for regular dental check-ups, follow-up treatments and non-emergency dental specialist services last year was 20 to 47 months, 3 to 55 months and 4 to 47 months respectively.
To alleviate the problem of long waiting times, the government launched the “Dental Service (Teeth Cleaning) Pilot Scheme Phase II” and the “Dental Service Shenzhen Pilot Scheme” in February this year. The former subsidizes civil servants and eligible persons to receive a teeth cleaning service at private dental clinics; the latter allows relevant personnel to go to designated institutions in the Mainland for teeth cleaning and oral X-ray examinations. The two schemes will be reviewed again in February next year and November this year respectively.
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