The Audit Commission suggested in a report released yesterday that non-Hong Kong residents who fail to pay public hospital bills should be barred from entry to the SAR.

The report released yesterday also rapped the Hospital Authority for its lackadaisical approach to recover dues.

The audit report revealed that for the five years ended on August 31, there were 37,000 non-local patients who defaulted on fees payment worth of HK$223 million, whereas 161,000 local patients defaulted only HK$99 million.

Some of the patients had frequently defaulted on fees payment for more than 20 times, but the hospitals were not sufficiently equipped to identify them.

The report pointed out that over the past two years the Hospital Authority (HA) had to write off more than HK$95 million of HK$121.6 million of fees due to non-local patients.

The authority received HK$1,607.7 million fees in 2005/06. As of March 31, the amount of fees owed was HK$130.4 million. The authority also wrote off HK$43.9 million.

The report also stated that the number of non-local patients received by public hospital was on the rise-from 13,765 in 2003/04 to 20,845 in 2005/06-despite that they were required to pay the full service cost.

Meanwhile, Secretary for Security Ambrose Lee told legislators that the number of babies by mainland women in Hong Kong had increased from 7,800 in 2001 to 19,000 last year.

Among them were 9,273 babies whose parents were not permanent Hong Kong residents, up from 620 in 2001.

The report said increasing use of public medical services by non-local patients had put heavy pressure on frontline staff.

The Director of Audit urged the government to expedite the review of amending the law to ban defaulter from re-entering Hong Kong and encourage travellers to buy insurance.

Measures taken

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food York Chow, however, said various measures had been taken to address the problem of defaulted payments, including increasing the advance deposit for non-local patients from HK$19,800 to HK$33,000.

The measures have lowered the rate of default by non-local obstetrics patients from 27 per cent in 2003/04 to 15 per cent in 2005/06.

A bureau spokesman, however, said prohibiting pregnant visitors from entering Hong Kong might not be effective in tackling the problem as it would be difficult to establish whether an individual visitor was pregnant. The measure might encourage mainland women to enter Hong Kong at an early stage of pregnancy.

The report also slammed the authority for not taking adequate measures to claim dues.

The report also rapped the authority for being tardy in its approach to claim the dues. It took the hospitals an average of 90 days to make the first telephone calls urging patients to pay fees after they had been discharged, the report alleged.

The hospitals took 91 to 560 days to make the first phone calls in 49 cases out of 150, according to the audit commission.

The hospitals also took more than six months to a year reporting 35,598 cases involving HK$40.6 million to the authority headquarters out of 42,107 unsettled cases.

The authority also did not send warning letters to 1,744 cases out of 3,900 meeting the criteria for such letters, involving HK$9.7 million.

The report said that it took the authority an average of 270 days, and even more than 300 days, to file a claim with Small Claim Tribunal, and up to 248 days to seek legal advice on what action to be taken after sending out warning letters.

Meanwhile, the report also rapped the authority and Social Welfare Department for not properly monitoring the management of medical fee waivers, which was aimed at alleviating the burden of those having financial problem.

It pointed out that the medical social workers did not provide justification for granting waivers to patients who had resources exceeding the financial limit for the system.