Eyeworld

15 EW NEWS & OPINION February 2015 the highest international standard of service within China. Neverthe- less, there have also been numerous challenges. For any new hospital, it takes time to develop a strong local reputation. The public hospitals are well known, enjoy a much larger scale, and have all the senior consul- tants and big name professors. Lan- guage is a major barrier—not just for overseas doctors, but even for those of us from Hong Kong, because we speak Cantonese. In addition, there are significant cultural differences between patients from Hong Kong and China. Hong Kong patients will accept being told that there is no treatment for their condition or that a treatment that they want will not work. But in China, patients will often not accept this conclusion. They may not be willing to leave your consultation room if you say that there is no treatment for their condition, or they may seek out alternative medicine. For public hospitals in China there are government sponsored medical insurance plans. Patients pay all cash to be seen at a pri- vate hospital. The fees that we are charging in our China hospital are about 50–70% of what we are charging in Hong Kong. However, it's still about double what patients are paying as co-insurance for their public care in China. Therefore, patients coming to a private hospi- tal are losing a government benefit that they are entitled to and paying a lot more out of pocket. As a result, their expectations are very high and sometimes unreasonable. Ultimately, China has enough people who can afford private care. In terms of development and survival, there are a number of challenges that we have to manage, but so far, our progress has been satisfactory. EW Contact information Lam: dlam.sklo.sysu.cn@gmail.com eye centers throughout China so that the overall standard of eyecare can be improved faster. Finally, ours is actually the first private hospital of any kind estab- lished in China under the CEPA scheme so I do hope that our success will encourage groups from other medical specialties to launch similar private clinics and hospitals. In this way more Chinese patients can benefit from the higher quality of Hong Kong medical services across all medical specialties. China's healthcare system has become overburdened because a great majority (more than 95%) of the care has been provided by public hospitals. These hospitals are not very patient centered because of the supply-demand imbalance. In contrast, we are very patient cen- tered and so it is not just our clinical care that is high end, but also our customer service. China is growing and developing very fast and needs to become an influential member of the international medical communi- ty. This means bringing the highest international standards and bench- marks to healthcare in China. The highest quality of clinical care and service requires excellent training— overall mission. For this first hos- pital we selected Shenzhen because it's so close to Hong Kong. From my home to the hospital is 1 hour door to door by car, so it's manageable. The other advantage of Shenzhen is that other Hong Kong ophthalmolo- gists can work there as well. If our project is successful, we hope to provide quality care of the highest international standard to the people of China, and this is very much needed. Secondly, from the perspective of Hong Kong ophthal- mologists like myself, we will be able to provide our care and services to a much larger market because the population of Hong Kong is only about 7 million. Having such an expanded market would really promote and advance the future development of health organizations in Hong Kong. Supporting the Chinese central government's policy, providing higher quality care for Chinese pa- tients, and expanding Hong Kong's potential healthcare market should be a win-win proposition for both China's and Hong Kong's medical systems. If our initial model is suc- cessful, this will hopefully stimulate the development of other private not just of physicians, but of the support staff as well. Dr. Chang: What does the name C-MER represent? Dr. Lam: 'C' stands for quality clin- ical service. 'M' represents modern management. 'E' stands for educa- tion. 'R' stands for research. Our eye hospital wants to provide not just strong clinical service, but also to achieve excellence in these other areas as well—on a par with the best run medical centers in the world. No matter how good your doctors or nurses are, they cannot be effective if the center is poorly managed. Dr. Chang: How and from where have you recruited ophthalmologists to staff this eyecare facility? Dr. Lam: Our focus is subspecialty eyecare including vitreoretinal, pedi- atric, oculoplastic, ocular oncology, glaucoma, and cataract services. We have 4 full-time foreign ophthal- mologists, 3 part-time Hong Kong ophthalmologists, 4 consultants from China, and 5 residents. As we continue to bring in subspecialist ophthalmologists to our facility, about one-third will be from Hong Kong, one-third will be from over- seas, and one-third will be from na- tional China. In terms of recruiting staff, I'm very active professionally in Hong Kong and China and also internationally. Naturally, many of our ophthalmologists were individ- uals that I already knew, but there are certainly many others whom I'd never met before. Dr. Chang: Based on your first 2 years of operation, do you sense that there is a strong or growing demand for private care? Dr. Lam: The demand for private care is definitely expanding in China, commensurate with the growth of the affluent sector of society. Without a private option, many people who have the finan- cial means would go to Hong Kong, Singapore, the U.S., the U.K., or Australia to receive care. Centers like ours allow these patients to access The hospital staff, with more than 100 members, including 8 Hong Kong/international faculty members Source (all): Dennis Lam, MD

• Cover