A specialist in family medicine on Thursday called on people to consult both a family doctor and a Chinese medicine practitioner once a year for regular check ups, adding that preventive care could lessen the burden on medical staff. The Liberal Party conducted a telephone questionnaire with more than 2,000 people over the past two months, in the hope of strengthening collaboration between Chinese and Western medical practitioners to better serve the public, and 70 percent said they would accept this medical partnership. Dr Billy Chiu, a member of the party, said this "one plus one is greater than two" method of seeing two different practitioners could increase the chance of catching medical conditions early on. "Since the aim is to do preventive care, so definitely with preventive care doing better, then obviously the percentage [of those] going to hospital will be much lower, so that will lead to less manpower demand inside the hospital," he said. "With the Hong Kong government's direction [on developing] the primary care commission and also 18 district health centres, I think we are looking forward to the outcome and also for the efficiency of increasing all these primary care preventive service models so with that, fewer people will go to inpatient [facilities] so the staff, the manpower planning, all this can be reviewed much efficiently." Dr Chiu said that promoting collaboration could also allow for better communication and teamwork between the two medical fields when treating the same patients. "In the past, I think many people, even including healthcare people, when we are not familiar about, for example, the drug interaction of Western medicine and herbs, so we simply tell people not to mix together or separate by four hours," he said. "But actually with more evidence we know that some Chinese medicine and also Western medicine when taken together, we can see the more beneficial effect. Number two, [Chinese medicine] actually alleviates the side effects of some of the Western medicine."
