The Hong Kong Physiotherapy Association has submitted its views to the Government, as part of the 2021 Policy Address Public Consultation.
Our paper submitted to the Government touches on several issues that cover the interests of physiotherapists from different sectors (HA, subvented, DH, private practice, academic institutions).
Please find the attached file for the full version of the paper (download here).
To summarise, the key points are:
- Primary healthcare development
- Physiotherapists are well equipped to carry out ALL the key functions of District Health Centres (DHCs).
- Increase mandatory physiotherapist provision for physiotherapists in both DHCs and DHC Express (DHCEs).
- Foster a more promising career prospect for physiotherapists in DHC(E)s. It should not be left to the hands of individual DHC(E) operators to design the ranks of physiotherapists in each DHC(E).
- Create specialty training programmes in primary healthcare among the local physiotherapy education institutions to support continuing development and growth of preventive physiotherapy in Hong Kong.
- Sports development
- Increase funding to support sports science and rehabilitation research.
- Increase funding to create more physiotherapist positions so that more athletes can receive timely physiotherapy services.
- Explore the possibility of collaborating with the private sector so that our athletes can receive quality and timely physiotherapy service.
- Supply and retention of physiotherapists
- Inject more funding into increasing the quota for physiotherapy student numbers.
- Increase space provision for physiotherapy education programmes.
- Our Association strongly recommends that the Master Pay Scale (MPS) be adjusted so that the starting salary point for physiotherapists is in line with that for a bachelor degree holder (i.e., point 16 for Physiotherapist II).
- Create Specialised or Advanced Practice Physiotherapist positions in Hospital Authority and Department of Health with an increment increase in salary.
- Establish a standard ratio of Senior Physiotherapist in the subvented sector.