'Improved dental registration to avoid queuing pain'

Preliminary registration for dental appointments at government clinics will start four hours earlier than usual from July to prevent patients from queuing overnight and making multiple trips, according to officials, after the city's auditor called on authorities to review the arrangements. The Audit Commission earlier observed some patients queuing up for hours at clinics just to try to get an appointment for the following day before registration starts at 12am. Under current arrangements, patients who have pre-registered to see the dentist must return to the clinic in person in the morning to pick up a disc for their appointment. At Legco's public accounts committee, Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau said registration would instead begin at 8pm for the following day's slots starting from July. "After [preliminary] registration, patients only need to report to the clinic half an hour before the appointed time and have their identity cards checked, and then they can receive service. The improved arrangement can avoid the pain of queueing overnight and making multiple journeys to the clinics," he told lawmakers. From Thursday, registration and disc distribution at a Sai Kung government dental clinic would begin at 1pm instead of 11am, so that patients can immediately receive services that begin at 1:30pm. He also said an electronic system for appointment registration at dental clinics was in the pipeline. "Patients no longer have to physically get a disc. The online platform will provide information of the number of remaining quota discs of the 11 clinics. We have started the work of developing the system, which will be launched shortly," Lo said. Officials attributed a shortage of dental staff to difficulties in increasing the annual quota of appointment slots, with Director of Health Ronald Lam pointing to a shortfall of 108 practitioners, which accounted for 30 percent of the total manpower. Lam said authorities decided to allocate to more resources to serving the underprivileged by raising the number of slots from 20,000 to 60,000 next year.