For each financial year, the Financial Secretary decides on the allocation of health budgets for the Hospital Authority and the Department of Health, the two main bodies in charge of public healthcare services. After receiving the budget allocated, they decide about their own internal budget allocation. According to the 2019-2020 Budget, the estimated recurrent government expenditure on public healthcare services was increased by 10.9% reaching the amount of $80.6 billion in 2019-2020 and accounting for 18.3% of the total recurrent government expenditure (The 2019-20 Budget, 2019a). The Government increased the recurrent financial provision for Hospital Authority by 8% to $68.8 billion and Department of Health by 27.9% to $13,301 million. The Government also committed to sustain the development of public healthcare with the establishment of $10 billion public healthcare stabilisation fund (Hospital Authority, 2019c; The 2019-20 Budget, 2019b).

For Hospital Authority, the health budget is further dispersed through the 7 clusters responsible for different geographical areas (including Hong Kong East, Hong Kong West, Kowloon Central, Kowloon East, Kowloon West, New Territories East, and New Territories West) by considering the population growth, demographic changes, incidence of chronic illness, healthcare service utilisation pattern, and organisation of services of each cluster and hospital (The Government of the Hong Kong SAR, 2017). Within each cluster, the budgets are further dispersed through programme areas in response to the service needs of each cluster.

References:

Hospital Authority. (2019c). Hospital Authority welcomes budget allocation for 2019-20.

The 2019-20 Budget. (2019a). Budget Speech.

The 2019-20 Budget. (2019b). Estimates – DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH.

The Government of the Hong Kong SAR. (2017). LCQ13: Resource allocation of Hospital Authority [Press release]. Retrieved from https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201712/13/P2017121300666.htm