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ple who are over 45 years old, the organization and partnerships among the Department of Health, the
logistics of the implementation of the scheme, es- Hospital Authority and the Social Welfare Depart-
pecially for individuals with screening needs, have to ment to build an integrated person-centered care
be researched. In view of the volume, one option, system in collaboration with non-profit organiza-
which could be further evaluated for feasibility, is for tions, the private sector and the community. Us-
the screening services from primary care providers ing the secondary data set provided by the Social
in the community to be carried out in stages over 3 Welfare Department, we have identified the health
years for different age groups at the initiation of the needs of older people in the community, which in-
Scheme. Additional research is needed to evaluate form us on the scope of services that the proposed
the Scheme itself, including whether subsequent Health-Enabling Network needs to cover.
screening needs to be repeated to the same co-
hort, and the effects and benefits accrued both in Under the proposed Network, Elderly Health
terms of health and the economy. Centres managed by the Department of Health
and the Community Health Centers of Hospital
The proposed Voucher Scheme can be first Authority, can serve as major health hubs, while
provided on those from low income households. The local District Elderly Community Centres, Neighbor-
rationale in offering the subsidy initially to the low hood Elderly Centres, or even private elderly service
income group is based on research showing that providers, can act as community partners to bring
individuals from low income families are 40% more healthcare services to older people living in public
likely to develop multimorbidity (Chung et al., 2015). housing estates. The Network will cover health pro-
An additional rationale to target this group is the motion and preventive care services, primary care
World Health Organization’s objective of health eq- services and rehabilitation services. For older people
uity, which states everyone in a society should have living in private residential care settings, we propose
adequate resources to achieve similar health sta- better linkage between healthcare and residential
tus, which advocates that more resources should care services providers. We also suggest the Net-
be given to those most in need. If the Scheme is work to gradually expand to private housing estates
fully implemented to cover the major diseases and to serve older people residing there. Preliminary find-
demonstrated to have achieved its objective, and ings from the spatial analysis suggest the feasibility
proven to be cost effective, the government could of building the Network.
consider extending the Scheme to fit the needs of
people with higher levels of household income. The success of the Health-Enabling Net-
work requires existing community service provid-
Based on the experiences of the existing ers, including subvented, self-financed and private
Elderly Health Care Voucher Scheme, a success- providers, to expand their services scope and addi-
ful voucher scheme depends on the design, and tional resources are necessary to support this op-
research and evaluation for effective policies. The erational model of care. Further research work is
services covered by the Scheme need to be target- also required in exploring strategies to establishing
ed. Information on the private primary care market career prospects for elderly services workers, offer-
have to be transparent. Ensuring supply of appropri- ing supplementary training for existing workers and
ate trained primary care doctors and increasing the using assistive robotic or healthcare technology in
health literacy of the general population are also es- elderly care settings. We recommend the govern-
sential. Last, we need to conduct goal-oriented eval- ment should commission research to study how
uation and cost-benefit analysis studies to under- the Health-Enabling Network can be realized to bet-
stand the impact and effectiveness of the Scheme. ter serve the health needs of an aging society. The
government should also study the feasibility of in-
(ii) Health-Enabling Network tegrated funding of medical and social services for

older population. Last, we also need to research pol-
Our research recommends the establish- icy options to supply additional spaces for services
ment of a Health-Enabling Network, which features expansion.

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