Hong Kong plans to conditionally admit non-locally-trained allied health professionals, and allow patients to seek physiotherapy without doctors’ referrals.
The SAR government tabled the Supplementary Medical Professions (Amendment) Bill 2025 in the Legislative Council on Wednesday, with the bill having had its first reading, pending lawmakers’deliberations.
The amendment is aimed at highlighting the important role that supplementary medical professionals - healthcare experts apart from doctors and nurses - have been playing in the city’s primary healthcare blueprint, and promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration in supplementary medical professions.
The Supplementary Medical Professions Ordinance enacted in 1980 covers the registration, discipline and management of five categories of professionals - physiotherapists, occupational therapists, optometrists, radiographers and medical laboratory technologists.
As these professions have been playing increasingly vital and specialized roles in Hong Kong’s healthcare system, the amendment proposes renaming “supplementary medical professions” as “allied health professions” to reflect their key functions and enhanced professional status.
Amid a persistent manpower shortage in certain allied medical professions, the bill proposes a new limited registration pathway to admit qualified non-locally trained allied health professionals to practice in designated institutions, including the Department of Health and the Hospital Authority, within their specialized fields.
According to the bill, allied health professionals under limited registration cannot transition directly to full registration. It’s proposed that non-locally trained allied health professionals be allowed to come to the SAR for academic exchanges and clinical demonstrations for a temporary, non-renewable period of not more than 14 days.
To encourage early medical intervention in the community level, the bill also proposes waiving the requirement for patients to present doctors’ referrals in seeking physiotherapy and occupational therapy under specific circumstances.
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Residents can directly seek physiotherapy and occupational therapy services if their health conditions have been diagnosed by a registered doctor or Chinese medicine practitioner in the past 12 months, or if they’ve been covered by recognized clinical protocols, or under emergency or other situations approved by the Supplementary Medical Professions Council.
The SMPC would also be renamed as the Allied Health Professions Council if the amendment is approved.
The proposed changes would allow traditional Chinese medicine practitioners to refer patients to allied health professionals in accordance with clinical needs, so as to promote cross-disciplinary collaboration and strengthen Chinese medicine’s role in primary care.
Alexander Woo Chuen-hau, president of the Hong Kong Physiotherapy Association, welcomed the move to do away with doctors’ referrals for physiotherapy under certain conditions.
If the bill gets the nod, the association hopes to have further discussions with Chinese medicine practitioners on coordinating certain diagnostic terminologies to smoothen referrals from them.
The association will further advise the government on providing clearer guidelines and timelines, including a schedule for reviewing the bill, Woo said.
Lawmaker Chan Wing-kwong, who’s also president of Hong Kong Registered Chinese Medicine Practitioners Association, said the bill is expected to bring forward the referral right that Chinese medicine practitioners have been pursuing for more than two decades.
He said Chinese medicine practitioners can directly refer patients with fractures for X-ray examinations under the amended bill, thus helping to provide standardized diagnoses.
Tung Wah College - a private tertiary education institution offering degree and diploma courses for healthcare professions - said renaming “supplementary medical professions” as “allied health professions” would better reflect the professionalism of the industry, and elevate the status of various sectors in the field.
The college also agreed that the new mechanism of introducing non-locally trained allied health professionals could alleviate the short-term manpower shortages in specific medical professions in the public healthcare system.
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In the long term, Hong Kong still needs to strengthen the training of professionals familiar with the local healthcare system, it said.
