“If life gives you lemon, make lemonade.”
When you encounter something
not-so-pleasant in life, try to make something meaningful and useful out of it.
This is a good and accurate description
of what general practitioners in Hong Kong have been doing throughout all these
years. There are over two thousand
general practitioners and family doctors serving the community. Some of them have been working for decades. They know people of their areas of service
well. They have been working for long
hours, with average of ten to twelve hours per day. A significant number of them even work seven
days a week. You can easily walk in a GP
clinic and have quick and effective service in most of the public holidays
including Lunar New Year. However, there
has been minimal support from anywhere. The
government has turned a blind eye to the snatching attitude of most landlords. The government is supportive to the oppressive
policy of the LINK towards general practitioners. Apart from these, the contributions of general
practitioners in the healthcare system in Hong Kong have never been recognized,
not to say appreciated. There have
always been ungrounded and biased criticisms from government officials. A recent example is the Healthcare Vouchers
Scheme, in which general practitioners are the main service providers. There are extra clerical and paper works with
unrelated data input by doctors without any extra payment for the added
service. There has not been any complaint
from the always-silent-group. Bewilderingly,
there are endless accusations of doctors over-charging the elderly.
“If life gives you anything, just make lemonade.”
This is a new quote I invented to
describe the behaviour of the government
officials. No matter what kind of
project or new idea, they have the ability to turn it sour and ruin it. The Healthcare Voucher Scheme is no exception.
Based on a single ambiguous result from
an ill-designed survey, government officials have repeatedly said that there
exist significant worries about healthcare providers raising their charges and thus cheating the elderly users and the government. I have refuted such groundless and serious
accusations openly
and repeatedly in the past Editorials and in Ming Pao. These can be retrieved in my blogs:
However, the
following was reported in Ming Pao on July 18, 2012:
據了解，醫療券首階段檢討發現，70%長者用醫療券看傷風咳，有違政府推出計劃原意，即推廣長者使用私營預防性護理服務如體檢等。因此，政府擬在醫療券中期檢討研究如何將計劃扶入正軌，包括聘請兼職學生到私家診所實地蒐集醫生收費，從而探討如何防止私家醫生提高收費，變相將增加的醫療券金額袋入醫生口袋，預料明年會有檢討結果。
This is
outrageous. This affects the images of
doctors seriously by treating some never verified accusations as facts. I would like to remind anyone who stated such
groundless accusations that there has never been any evidence to support them. Have there been any complaints received? Have there been any suspect doctors under
investigation? Has there been anyone
arrested? Has the government set up any
hotline to receive complaints? Since the
accusation originated from a study, why don’t those so eager to pursue in this
subject trace the participants in the interview and find out the bad doctors?
Again,
this is outrageous. The hidden official
even took one step further and suggested to hire part-time students to spy on
and to monitor doctors. So, the clear
message to the public was that the integrity of doctors was inferior to that of
part-time students. With minimal
training and no accountability, part-time students should be given the power to
go into records and charges of private doctors. Based on the reports and findings of part-time
students, a series of investigations should be initiated to look into any
suspected doctor’s practice. Should the
students be officially called Red Guards?
Damn it!
It is outrageous! I apologize for the use of language. It is far too mild to express my anger and the
absurdity of this matter.
(Source: HKMA News August 2012)
