The number of approved medical fee waivers for Hong Kong’s low-income families has ballooned to over 91,000 in just over two months, compared to the previous annual figure of around 14,000, under the city’s reform of its public healthcare fees, Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau said Wednesday.

Answering a query at the Legislative Council, Lo said the significant increase showed that the reform of public hospital fees and charges, and the concurrent expansion of the Hospital Authority’s medical fee waiver mechanism, effectively strengthened support for low-income families and underprivileged groups.

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While new hospital fees were introduced under the reform starting Jan 1, the HA also expanded its medical fee waiver mechanism, increasing the number of eligible low-income individuals from 300,000 to 1.4 million.

From early November 2025, when the HA began accepting applications from patients for fee waivers applicable after the reform took effect, up until Monday, the HA has approved 91,479 medical fee waiver applications, including 47,051 "conditional waivers", Lo said.

“This figure far exceeded the annual number of approximately 14,000 patients who were approved to receive medical fee waivers in the past,” he said.

“In other words, at least an additional 77,000 patients to date have already benefitted from the safety net under the enhanced medical fee waiver mechanism, from having to pay the fees and charges in full before the reform to now receiving fee waivers.”

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He said recent data showed that the HA was receiving an average of about 5,900 medical fee waiver applications daily.

“According to approval records, approximately 82 percent of applications were successfully approved on average, with some hospital clusters reaching over 90 percent, with medical fee waiver certificates issued on the same day,” Lo said.

He added that the reform of hospital fees enables limited healthcare resources to be more precisely directed to help "poor, acute, serious, critical" patients who are most in need, while ensuring that no patient is denied medical care due to lack of means.