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Hong Kong patients enrolled in government subsidised healthcare services will be able to buy medicines under a specific list of drugs at prices much lower than market rates when a new initiative launches late next year. The Health Bureau also said on Thursday that the Community Pharmacy Programme, set to launch in the fourth quarter of 2026, would first roll out in four districts – Eastern, Yau Tsim Mong, Sha Tin and Yuen Long. The Community Drug Formulary – a list of medicines commonly used in primary healthcare, such as those for prevention and managing chronic diseases – would be introduced in the second half of next year. “To promote the development of primary healthcare and ease the burden on the public healthcare system, we believe the Community Drug Formulary will play a useful role,” said Dr Cheung Wai-lun, director of the bureau’s Strategic Purchasing Office. The idea of developing a community drug formulary and pharmacy programme was first proposed in last year’s policy address, with the aim of giving people access to more affordable primary healthcare drugs. Patients enrolled in the Chronic Disease Co-Care Pilot Scheme and other primary healthcare services would be able to buy medications listed under the formulary through participating family doctors or community pharmacies. Commissioner for Primary Healthcare Dr Pang Fei-chau said the formulary would also cover medications used in women’s and elderly health services. Drugs listed under the formulary, mainly selected from the Hospital Authority Drug Formulary and procured by the authority, would be grouped into three tiers. Tier one would be non-patented drugs, which would take up 80 to 90 per cent of total medications on the list. Tier two would cover patented and specified drugs, and the third tier would cover drugs classified as “special category” which the authorities did not elaborate on. All the medicines would be provided under a co-payment model, requiring patients to pay a certain amount. Cheung said the authorities had yet to decide on the co-payment amount, which would be announced around the middle of next year. “The [co-payment amount] would certainly be at an affordable level, and a lot cheaper than the market price,” he said. Patient contributions for tier-one drugs would be determined by the type of drugs and the dispensing period, while the cost for tier-two medications would be determined by both type and usage. The formulary would initially include more than 100 drugs, with plans to expand to between 200 and 400 types of medications in the long term. The Community Pharmacy Programme would operate under two service models. In the first model, the pharmacies would serve patients from public family medicine clinics, who could request refills if they had exhausted the eight-week supply provided by those clinics. Patients enrolled in the government’s primary healthcare programmes who prefer to obtain medications outside their family doctors’ clinics could also visit those pharmacies. The second model targets residential care homes, where the pharmacies would prepack and deliver drugs monthly for residents who are public hospital patients. Public hospital patients using the community pharmacies would pay the same fees stipulated by the Hospital Authority, while those under the government’s primary healthcare programmes will be charged the co-payments set by the formulary. Meanwhile, the authorities on Thursday launched the Guidelines of Practice for Community Pharmacy, providing standards across four key areas: management and staff, premises requirements, daily operation procedures and scope of services.
