More doctors and patients are calling for the ban on the city's free ambulance service taking patients to private hospitals to be scrapped.
Responding to complaints, the Medical Association and several legislators say the present system denies patients the right to prompt specialist care and emergency operations.
Public ambulances, which are run by the Fire Services Department, are required to take patients to the nearest public hospital emergency unit. They do not heed requests to go to the city's 13 private hospitals.
The guidelines aim to make sure patients receive prompt care, but the Medical Association says the practice is instead delaying treatment.
'These rigid rules are wasting public resources and denying patients' right to private hospital services,' association president Dr Choi Kin said yesterday.
'Why can't patients have the right to be sent to private hospitals if their doctors have already assessed their conditions and got the private bed or operation room ready? Patients sent to accident and emergency rooms often have to wait for hours before they can be seen by a specialist.'
Choi cited the example of heart patients who might need urgent surgery and whose private doctors, knowing their medical history, could book an operating theatre before they arrived at the private hospital.
