What is Elderly Health Care Voucher?
Health Care Voucher aimed to subsidised eligible elderly persons to pay for private primary healthcare services.
What is the amount of Elderly Health Care Voucher?
Eligible elderly persons aged 65 or above who hold a valid Hong Kong Identity Card or a valid Certificate of Exemption can receive $2,000 Health Care Voucher annually. Unused voucher amount can be retained for use and accumulated up to $8,000.
Eligible elderly persons in spousal relationship can share use health care vouchers between them.
How to use Elderly Health Care Voucher?
Elderly persons are not required to pre-register or collect the vouchers. Health Care Vouchers are issued and used electronically through the eHealth System (Subsidies). The elderly only needs to pick a listed healthcare service providers and use the healthcare services.
How to pair up Health Care Voucher account with spouse?
Prior application is not required. When either party of an elderly couple uses the Voucher to pay for healthcare services, both only need to attend the practice of an Enrolled Service Provider together in person (with HKID card and a Hong Kong phone no. that can receive SMS), to have their Voucher accounts paired up through a one-time registration. Once their accounts are paired up, either party can, upon exhaustion of one’s Voucher account balance, use the remaining Voucher balance in his/her spouse’s account.
How to receive additional Health Care Voucher reward under the Pilot Reward Scheme?
Starting from 13 November 2023, once an elderly person has accumulated Voucher spending of $1,000 or above on designated Primary Health Care services (“PHC services”) within the same year, the eHealth System (Subsidies) will automatically allot $500 reward to the elderly person’s Health Care Voucher account for using on designated PHC services in future.
The designated PHC services including:
- Preventive services
(e.g. health assessment, body check, vaccination, etc.) - Follow-up/monitoring of long-term conditions
(e.g. treatment for chronic diseases) - Chronic Disease Co-care Pilot Scheme
(e.g. Hypertension and diabetes mellitus screening services, medical consultations and drugs in treatment phase, etc.) - District Health Centres/District Health Centre Expresses
(e.g. the Chronic Disease Management Programme on osteoarthritic knee pain and low back pain) - The University of Hong Kong - Shenzhen Hospital and its Health Centre
(e.g. Receive outpatient services on preventive and follow-up/monitoring of long-term conditions provided at the designated clinics)
Key points:
- The three-years Pilot Reward Scheme will run up to 31 December 2026. An elderly person can be allotted the reward once each year at most; that is, an elderly person can obtain at most $1,500 reward throughout the term of the Pilot Reward Scheme.
- Only the Voucher amount used within the same year will be counted towards the accumulated amount.
- The reward will expire by the end of the following year.
- An SMS message will be sent to the Hong Kong mobile phone number provided by the elderly person as notification, which will also show the expiry date of the reward.
- For more details, please refer to the Health Care Voucher Scheme website.
What does the scheme plan cover?
The scheme is now extended to cover healthcare services provided by 14 types of healthcare professionals. Apart from Medical Practitioners, Chinese Medicine Practitioners, Dentists, Chiropractors, Registered Nurses and Enrolled Nurses, Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Radiographers, Medical Laboratory Technologists, Optometrists in Part I of the register, the newly- added professionals include Audiologists, Dietitians, Clinical Psychologists and Speech Therapists registered with the relevant healthcare professional bodies accredited under the Accredited Registers Scheme for Healthcare Professions of the Government. Elderly persons can use vouchers to pay for the private primary healthcare services provided by 14 types of healthcare professionals.
How to use the vouchers at Quality Healthcare?
All eligible medical professionals under Quality HealthCare, including general practitioners, specialists, registered Chinese medicine practitioners, physiotherapists, and dentists and nurses, are enrolled in the Elderly Health Care Voucher Scheme. All of our medical centres accept the use of Health Care Vouchers to encourage the elderly to make frequent use for both curative and preventive healthcare services.
