Caritas Medical Centre

Caritas Medical Centre (Chinese: 明愛醫院) is a hospital founded in Cheung Sha Wan, New Kowloon, Hong Kong in 1964. It is the major hospital in Sham Shui Po District and managed by the Hospital Authority and Caritas Hong Kong.

History

Founded by Caritas-Hong Kong in 1964, Caritas Medical Centre is an acute general hospital with around 1,100 beds situated in Shamshuipo. It provides a full range of acute and rehabilitation care, ambulatory and community medical services, including a 24-hour accident and emergency service, general outpatient service, and inpatient and outpatient specialist services in a one-stop setting - so called single episode care. The hospital maintains close ties with its parent organization, Caritas-Hong Kong, and a strong Catholic culture under the motto "Love in the Service of Hope".

ervices

The hospital has well-developed supporting services, including Pathology, Radiology, Anaesthesiology and Allied Health services. Other ambulatory and outreach community services include Geriatric Day Hospital and Community Geriatric Assessment Team, Community Nursing service, and Palliative Home Care service. The services provided reflect the needs of the population served - ageing, low income, new immigrants.

Caritas Medical Centre is the referral centre of the Kowloon West Cluster of the Hospital Authority in Eye service serving the entire Kowloon west region. The Orthopaedic Rehabilitation Service for Kowloon West Cluster is also based at Caritas Medical Centre. The Palliative Care Unit (inpatient and home care team) serves patients referred from hospitals of the Kowloon West Cluster. The hospital runs the largest Developmental Disabilities Unit (Project Sunshine) for the entire territory of Hong Kong, to provide severely mentally-handicapped patients under the age of 16 with treatment, training and development in a home-like setting. Despite not being a university hospital, it does provide teaching opportunities for medical and nursing students from the two local medical faculties.

Future Development

To meet the ever increasing demand and expectation in medical services, Caritas Medical Centre has started a major re-development project which has its phase I completed in 2002 - a 14-storey new block, Wai Shun Block, for accommodating all acute services. Planning for re-development of the rest of the facilities of the hospital (phase II - ambulatory, rehabilitation and supporting services) has already started, with completion date planned in 2010.