Health Bureau releases HK’s Domestic Health Accounts 2022/23

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     The Health Bureau (HHB) released the Hong Kong's Domestic Health Accounts (DHA) 2022/23 today (July 23). Updated annually, the DHA provides a systematic description of the flow of health expenditure in Hong Kong over a 12-month period, forming a basis for assessing and understanding the levels and trends of health spending in Hong Kong.
      
     The DHA is compiled in accordance with the guidelines given in "A System of Health Accounts 2011" collaboratively published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Eurostat which is the statistical office of the European Union, and the World Health Organization. It classifies the overall health expenditure into four dimensions of analysis, namely Health Care Financing Schemes (HFS), Revenues of HFS, Health Care Providers and Health Care Functions.
      
     The DHA shows the amount of funds provided by major sources (such as government, private organisations, and households), and the type of services for which these funds are used (such as inpatient and outpatient care, dental services, and medical goods) and the institutional entities providing the services (such as hospitals, outpatient clinics, and pharmacies). These data enable policymakers, researchers and the public to assess the performance of the local health system over time and to evaluate health policies. The data can also be utilised to make comparison with other economies that adopt the same framework in calculating their health expenditure.
      
     The DHA 2022/23 has now been uploaded to the HHB website (www.healthbureau.gov.hk/statistics/en/dha.htm). Its time-series data are shown in an online interactive data dashboard with tables and graphs available to facilitate further analysis and research.
      
     To reflect the increasing government health-related programmes with services provided to Hong Kong residents outside Hong Kong, the coverage of the DHA has been widened to include government subvention to these health-related programmes, e.g. those in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. In addition, the DHA dashboard provides an option for readers to view the data with or without COVID-19 expenditure between 2019/20 and 2022/23, thus facilitating time-series analysis.

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