Extended working hours and more staff for public healthcare

Alexis Tam also revealed some of the plans related to health, namely regarding the new Islands Hospital and the expansion of services in the current public hospital.
According to the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, the hospital will need about 2,000 workers, a number that cannot be hired at once. “The staff for the new hospital needs to be hired and trained in advance; this cannot be done from one day to the next. This year we already hired over 500 people to work on the public hospital and other healthcare services,” he mentioned.
Mr Tam said that the new staff hired this year alone allowed, among other things, the extension of some public hospital services that now operate only until 10pm as well as the expansion of the Tap Seac and Taipa healthcare center working hours. “We are working on this, you need to give us some time. This year we already performed several changes that are helping the citizens of Macau to have better access to health services,” he continued.
“We will fully operate the public hospital and make it work like two hospitals. The public hospital is used to running in the daytime and does not run at night. However, we will expand the working hours and allow residents to access specialty services in an easier way. So the public hospital will have extended working hours, even at night,” he pledged.
Regarding the medical staff that the government intends to hire, the secretary clarified that local healthcare workers will always have recruitment priority. However, in case of shortage, there are protocols being established mainly with four countries and regions, namely Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, and Portugal.
In order to solve the shortage of medical specialists, the government is also planning to set up a specialist medical school in order to train a larger local workforce.