1 Height limit blocks hospital's building plan
Ella Lee, SCMP 19 March 2008

Kwong Kwok-hay (right_ and Wyman Li of the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hoposital Photo: Robert Ng. Source: SCMP

The Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital has said it will appeal against a height limit that is barring its plan to build a high-rise block.

The private hospital in Happy Valley intends to tear down its eight-storey Li Shu Fan Block and erect a 38-storey building on the site to double bed capacity from 500 to 1,000 in the next decade.

It submitted the redevelopment plan to the Buildings Department in November and was informed last month that a height restriction under an outline zoning plan, imposed on January 18, would limit the new building to 12 storeys.

Hospital management said the government's push for a stronger private health-care sector to relieve overburdened public services would be "empty talk" without a co-ordinated policy to support the sector.

Hospital deputy medical superintendent Kwong Kwok-hay said yesterday that the decision "came as a shock" because they were just finishing the redevelopment of the 17-storey Li Shu Pui Block into 38 stories. The two blocks are next to each other.

"The government on one hand encourages private hospitals to expand, but on the other hand, it bars our development," Dr Kwong said. "We will appeal to the Town Planning Board and definitely we will fight to the end for it."

The Private Hospital Association, which represents all 12 private hospitals, has said expensive land costs have suffocated their development.

Association president Alan Lau Kwok-lam called on the government to work out a co-ordinated development policy.

"If the government takes health-care reform as an important reconstruction of the medical services infrastructure, the Food and Health Bureau has to talk to the Development Bureau," Dr Lau said. "We need a better co-ordinated policy."

The association said the number of private hospital beds had to be expanded from the current 3,000 to at least 4,500 in the next five years to meet rising demands.

Hong Kong Sanatorium's administration manager Wyman Li says the hospital now treats 2,000 to 3,000 people a month and the patient load increases at 13 per cent a year.

"We are 100 per cent full now, and our patient load doubles every eight years," Mr Li said.

"We need more beds to serve the public but now we are stuck with the height restriction."

He said the hospital had always been based on Hong Kong Island and it was difficult to branch out.

"We cannot join a land auction for new land because it is too expensive for a private hospital operator. An idea to set up a second hospital in Kowloon and the New Territories is unfeasible because the cost is too high. And with two hospitals, we cannot share medical equipment and staff."

Mr Li said a new 1,000-bed hospital would need at least HK$3.5 billion in building investment and HK$600 million in annual staff costs.

He said the government's proposal to get a private hospital to jointly run a Lantau hospital "cannot work". "Our patients and doctors are based on Hong Kong Island, how can we do our business so far away?"