The Department of Health’s dental street queueing system will undergo changes starting from July of this year. Citizens will now be able to register preliminarily from 8 p.m. the night before their appointment, allowing them to receive their queue number when the clinic opens the next day, instead of the current practice where they have to register at midnight and queue in the early morning the next day, avoiding late-night waiting. The government also plans to introduce online electronic queue registration within this year. However, grassroots organizations and lawmakers have pointed out that these changes in the queueing system are just addressing the symptoms and not the root of the problem of insufficient dental manpower and services provided by the government.
During an interview on a radio program on the 8th, Peng Hongchang, Secretary of a community organization association, mentioned that the new arrangement can streamline the queueing process. Registering preliminarily at 8 p.m. allows individuals to know their appointment time, eliminating the need to return to the clinic the next day to find out their queue number and appointment time slot. However, he highlighted that the new method still only scratches the surface and does not address the fundamental issue of the shortage of dental personnel in the Department of Health. Even with the future implementation of electronic queueing for online appointments, it may not resolve the problem of limited quotas. Furthermore, elderly individuals or those not familiar with digital tools may require assistance from family members, elderly centers, social service centers, or personnel in dental clinics.
Peng Hongchang welcomed the government’s plan to increase an additional 40,000 spots utilizing a new model on top of the existing 20,000 street queue spots from next year. By collaborating with non-governmental organizations to provide dental services to disadvantaged communities, he believes that leveraging private dental resources through volunteer organizations can help alleviate the issue of government service shortages. However, these services would mainly cater to emergency cases such as pain relief, extractions, and future additional filling services provided by the government. He suggested that if government dental clinics could also offer regular oral health check-ups, it would lead to a more comprehensive service focusing on preventive dental care.
Regarding the expansion of the current street queue spots to 40,000, the Chairwoman of the Legislative Council’s Health Committee, Chan Hoi Yan, expressed concerns about whether the current number of dentists in Hong Kong can cope with the added service demand. She mentioned that currently, there are over 2,800 registered dentists in the city, with a ratio of only 0.37 dentists per person, much lower compared to other cities. Additionally, there is a lack of dental professional counseling staff. She questioned the government’s genuine efforts to improve this situation, citing that there were only four additional spots for dental treatment therapists this year. Therefore, she urged citizens to practice basic oral hygiene and not wait until they experience pain before seeking treatment, emphasizing that the current changes in the queueing method for dental services by the government do not address the underlying problems. She also suggested that the government could provide subsidies to senior and capable civil servants to access private dental services through public-private collaboration, freeing up government dental service quotas for public use.
Former President of the Hong Kong Dental Association, Wang Zhiwei, stated that there are over 380 positions for dental doctors in the Department of Health, with 108 vacancies (approximately 30% of the positions) indicating a severe shortage. The main reasons behind this shortage are the retirement of dentists, the influx of immigrants, and the increased demand for dental care post-pandemic, exacerbating the insufficient dental workforce within the government.
However, he believes that this is only a short-term issue and the situation will change as more residents seek dental services on the mainland. The number of local dental students admitted has increased in recent years, from a few graduates joining the government annually to dozens each year in recent times. In addition, allowing foreign dentists to practice in Hong Kong in the future is expected to quickly fill the 108 vacancies.