More Hong Kong patients choose mainland hospitals

With the improvement of mainland's medical services and relative lower costs, more Hong Kong patients are choosing to get medical care in hospitals in the Chinese mainland. Moreover, most of these patients come to get operations.

According to Ta Kungpao, a 60-year-old Hongkonger who contracted cholecystitis last year and needed an operation, he decided to treat his illness in a mainland hospital. If he chose to go to a hospital in Hong Kong he would not only waste lot of time waiting, but would also spend much more money. He got his operation in the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, and he returned to Hong Kong just three days after the operation and of course, he had more money in his pocket.

There were more than 18,000 people from HK, Macao and Taiwan who chose to come to mainland hospitals in 2009, increasing by nearly 200 people year on year. In addition, some top commercial insurance companies have expended their business into mainland China and enable more patients to accept treatment in the mainland.

It is understood that, the price difference for fitting a cardiac pacemaker in Hong Kong and mainland is dozens of thousands of HK dollars.

By People's Daily Online