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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
The Hospital Authority (HA) announced today (December 30) that it will extend the revamped Patient Billing and Revenue Collection System to all public hospitals on January 8, 2014, to bring greater convenience to public hospital patients.
The system changeover will start from January 1 and will take one week to complete. The HA spokesman appealed for public understanding for the possible incidence of slight delay. "While settlement can still be made as usual during the system changeover from January 1 to 7, patients may need to wait a little longer for the manual calculation of hospital charges. Subsequent bill adjustments may be required after the changeover. Patients discharged during the period will be updated on any adjustments needed when the system resumes full operation on January 8," the spokesman said.
Upon the full implementation on January 8, the new system will consolidate, in a single bill, charges for a patient in all hospitals and treatment episodes within the billing period. Patients will also be able to settle bills in any hospital shroff, alongside other payment methods such as those at 7-Eleven convenience stores and Internet banking services. The newly introduced monthly summary statement will provide patients with a concise overview of all unsettled bills for services used in any of the public hospitals.
The spokesman said that the three-phase implementation of the system started in January this year to roll out to all public hospitals in Hong Kong West, Kowloon Central and Kowloon West Clusters, and Prince of Wales Hospital in New Territories East Cluster.
Following the smooth changeover and operation in the first two phases, the new billing system is now ready to extend to the remaining hospitals and clusters, including Hong Kong East, Kowloon East, New Territories East and New Territories West Clusters. Details of the implementation are listed in the Appendix.
The new system will be implemented in all public hospitals to handle over 1 million patient discharges each year.
"An information video and a poster have been produced to keep the public informed and help them to understand the key features of the new billing system," the spokesman added.
Ends/Monday, December 30, 2013
Issued at HKT 15:08
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