The University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Hospital (HKU-SZH) which opened in July 2012, is a major comprehensive public hospital built by the Shenzhen municipal government, and runs according to a modern medical management model supported by The University of Hong Kong.

Our Department has played a significant role in the establishment and development of Family Medicine (FM) services at HKU-SZH since 2012. Our senior professoriate staff have served as Chiefs of Service in Family Medicine (Professor Cindy LK Lam: July 2012 - June 2018; Dr William CW Wong: July 2018 - Present) in leading the development of FM services and overseeing the delivery of clinical services, This has included pioneering the "General Practice before Specialist” service and “Package Fee” clinical care models in HKU-SZH during the reform of service delivery model at 3A hospitals in China. The aims of these new family medicine-led new models of care are to enable accessible, appropriate and affordable medical treatment, and avoid wastage of healthcare resources. With the support of our clinical staff providing on-site clinical supervision and training for PRC doctors at HKU-SZH, the FM services have been recognised as a highlight of the HKU-SZH by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards assessment (ACHS) and 3A hospital accreditations. This has created a high demand for clinical attachments to the FM Department in HKU-SZH from primary care doctors in Shenzhen and other parts of China. The Department also ran Health Promotion Office at HKU–SZH between 2014-18 and was awarded Excellence Leadership in Population Health & Health Promotion in ACHS in 2017.

The FM Department in HKU-SZH has advanced its clinical services since 2012 by establishing various clinics as follows:

FM Clinical Psychology Clinic
This multidisciplinary clinic provides a one-stop integrated medical and psychological service that is served by a team of psychotherapists, nurses and general practitioners (GPs) to provide early diagnosis and whole-person drug and non-drug management to patients with common mental health problems, integrating mental health into primary care to enhance population mental health.

Family Medicine Early Pregnancy Assessment Clinic
This clinic provides a new service to assure the correct dating of early pregnancy and to ensure fair provision of in-demand obstetrics services. The clinic is a pioneering model, which demonstrates how FM can support other specialist services.

Integrative Chronic Disease Management Clinic
This service was first established to provide follow up of patients with chronic diseases and was expanded to open booking, providing whole-person care. This has been shown to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of care for patients with chronic disease. This saves patients from the need to attend multiple expensive specialist clinics which has been the traditional delivery model in China.

Adult Vaccine Clinic
This clinic is one of the two adult vaccine clinics in Shenzhen and is able to provide effective primary prevention. It is hoped that this clinic will help to change the paradigm from a focus on disease treatment to prevention across the health care system in Shenzhen and eventually other areas of China.

Out-of-hours General Practice clinic in the Accident & Emergency (AED) Department
Setting up an emergency FM clinical service during the Influenza peak season helps relieve the AED doctors’ workload, and reduce patient waiting time.

Apart from clinical services, our academic and clinical staff have enhanced the research and knowledge exchange between our Department in HKU and the FM Department in HKU-SZH, which includes:

International FM Centre
Commissioned by the Shenzhen Health Bureau, it aims to promote the standards and pathways of care in primary care in Shenzhen including family medicine training and health promotion to the international standard.

Introduction of a new chronic disease management model, which involves a new Risk Assessment and Management Programme for patients with DM (RAMP-DM) in the GP and Chronic Disease and Integrated Care Clinic at the HKUSZH to provide risk-stratified personalized management to DM patients, based on the evidence of our research on long-term outcomes of DM patients and the effectiveness of RAMP-DM.

Crowdsourcing Hepatitis B/C Testing and Linkage-to-care service in China. This is a new model of Hepatitis B/C Testing and Linkage-to-care under research by a RCT from 2018 to 2021. The results will inform policy and practice on how to improve the detection of chronic viral hepatitis in primary care setting, and the delivery of effective treatment of chronic viral hepatitis in China.