The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has extended its voucher plan to offer more convenience for the city’s elderly persons to use Elderly Health Care Vouchers (EHCVs) in all the nine mainland cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

The scheme now includes 12 additional medical institutions in the GBA, bringing the number of pilot medical institutions under the scheme to 19, the SAR government announced on Friday.

Together with the two existing service points operated by the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital, a total of 21 service points in the Bay Area will be allowed to use EHCVs, benefitting more than 1.78 million eligible Hong Kong seniors.

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The newly-added 12 medical institutions are Tier III Class A hospitals, providing integrated healthcare services, including dental, according to the government.

“The service points of the pilot scheme are meticulously planned to extend to GBA cities that are not yet covered, namely Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing, as well as to set up additional service points in the GBA cities that are already covered,” said Secretary for Health Prof Lo Chung-mau.

The extension also includes Chinese medicine hospitals for the first time to provide eligible seniors with additional choices in healthcare services, he added.

The main purpose of implementing the pilot scheme, he said, is to offer more convenience and flexibility for the SAR’s eligible elderly persons by providing more service points for them to better use their EHCVs for primary healthcare services to improve their health.

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The service scope eligible for claims for the EHCVs at medical institutions under the pilot scheme will be largely the same, the government said, adding that the arrangements for shared use of EHCVs between spouses and the EHCV Pilot Reward Scheme are also applicable.

Eligible people have to register with the eHealth system. The "Cross-boundary Health Record" and "Personal Folder" functions of the eHealth mobile application will also be applicable to the medical institutions under the scheme to offer convenience for Hong Kong citizens to self-carry their electronic health records for cross-boundary uses.

Launched by the government in 2009, the Elderly Health Care Voucher Scheme currently subsidizes eligible Hong Kong elderly persons aged 65 and above with an annual voucher amount of HK$2,000 for them to choose in their own community private primary healthcare services that best suit their health needs.

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Last year, the government launched the pilot scheme to extend the EHCV coverage to suitable medical institutions in the GBA and as at September 2024, the coverage was extended to seven integrated medical and dental institutions in Guangzhou, Zhongshan, Dongguan and Shenzhen.

In his 2024 Policy Address last October, the chief executive announced the extension of the pilot scheme to cover all the nine mainland GBA cities.