As the only medical body helping the Housing Authority to allocate public estate clinics for 34 years since 1966, the previous Estate Doctors Association takes another 7 years to transform to the present Union with her new missions. The success of our Union with her increasing number of membership is not a miracle but the result of the concerted effort of you all!
With the members・ approval of the special resolutions on the prerequisites for the 5 key posts in the Extraordinary General Meeting held on 25 October 2007, we have finally brought the constitutions and regulations of the previous Estate Doctors Association more or less back to our Union. Suffice to say that we have in addition created more posts in the Union such as Honorary advisers, CME advisers, Financial adviser; and create new committees such as Committee on Doctors・ Rights and Autonomy, Research Ethics Committee etc to meet the needs of our increasing membership.
The Membership Services Committee under the leadership of Dr. Tang Yiu Tin has made, among others, a fruitful progress of organizing both local and outside Hong Kong tours welcome by members at large. At present, we are organizing local half day tour to Kadoorie Farm on 13 January 2008 (please refer to enclosed circular no. 0871), outside Hong Kong trips to Cheung Ka Kai for 6 days in the Chinese New Year from 7 February 2008 to 12 February 2008 and for the first time Alaska cruise on board Mercury of Celebrity in late May from 24th May to 2nd June next year (please refer to enclosed circular no. 0873). We do hope you can join and enjoy the friendship during these trips tailor made to the input from our members.
As far as the running of our Medical Protection Plan (please refer to enclosed circular no. 0877) is concerned, we have roughly 500 registered subscribers by now. According to Dr. Leung Hon Fai, Chairman of Medical Protection Committee, we are financially sound to reduce the annual premium, but instead the underwriter chose to give us more legal support for potential complaints and complaints not covered previously. In the long run, I do hope that our members have a better choice in the market for Medical Protection and the price of which would not increase irrationally. If you think that your present Medical Protection scheme is too expensive, why not give us a chance to serve you?
As I have stated before, two major functions of our Union are: (1) to protect the interests of our members to provide good medical practice to our patients by dealing with HMOs or MCOs and; (2) to upgrade our members・ medical knowledge and skills through organizing appropriate CME functions. We aim at a wider scope of representation so that more doctors, especially those in private sector, will join us to form a stronger medical body to protect our legal rights and interests. We have now extended our membership not only to those with limited registration but those who are provisionally registered and those still in medical schools. For those members who have kids in the medical field, please do encourage them to join our big family.
On behalf of our Union, Dr. Cheung Wan Kit, Chairman of the Committee on Doctors・ Rights and Autonomy is negotiating with HMOs or MCOs on the issue of ：medical vouchers without stated charges； which may lead doctors to violate the Professional Code and conduct promulgated by the Medical Council of Hong Kong. (Please refer to Page xx of this Bulletin for details). We welcome our member, Dr. Luk Wai Leung, who is outspoken against unethical behaviour of HMOs or MCOs to work as Vice-Chairman in the Committee on Doctors・ Rights and Autonomy. Regardless of your status of membership in the Union, you are most welcome to work with the Union as one family in whatever way you wish to contribute.
As far as CME activities are concerned, we provided the highest maximum capacity of all the CME activities provided during the period of the first review by the Medical Council of Hong Kong from 1st October 2001 to 31st March 2002 among the total 9 CME providers for CME programme for practising doctors who are not taking CME programme for specialists. This is the first and only statistics released by the Medical Council of Hong Kong on 7th January 2003. I do hope that this can be maintained and flourished. However, recently we have received complaints from members in attending our CME activities. We have members complaining of not able to register for CME study group activities because of the limited quota provided by the sponsors and sometimes seats are being occupied by non-members; we have members complaining of not enough food in attending the Princess Margaret Hospital Sunday Afternoon Symposia because the number of members attending the symposia without prior registration has escalated to a level that the secretariat can hardly predict. According to our records, the ratio of unregistered attendee to registered attendee to the PMH Symposia reaches a high figure at 2:1 recently. These problems have been discussed thoroughly in our last council meeting. We intend to solve the problems by first soliciting comments from members and then introducing measures to rectify such problems stepwise early next year. Our newly appointed Chairman of the Committee on CME, Dr. Lee Chok Huen, will take up these difficult tasks. Please do help Dr. Lee by attending our CME activities with prior registration.
With the arrival of the year 2008, we have to face the new challenges of Health Care Reform in Hong Kong. The changes in such a reform, be it drastic or minor, would in one way or the other, affect every one of us in our daily medical practice as in the case of impending Tin Shui Wai North PPI Project. As such, we should be well prepared to cope with such changes.
Finally, while avoiding touching on serious matter in this message, I would appeal to you all to join us to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the return of Hong Kong・s sovereignty to Mainland China in the coming Annual Dinner Party held on 25th December 2007 in the HKCEC. With Dr. Ng Yu Kin as the new Chairman of the Social Activities Committee in organizing the splendid function (Please refer to page xx of this Bulletin and enclosed circular no. 0861), I am sure this would be the most memorable event that you might have attended so far.
Cheers and Happy Holidays!
Dr. Yeung Chiu Fat Henry