Tai Po hospital tender dumped after bidder fails to meet conditions
Health minister says only bidder for the private hospital plot did not measure up, as GHK's HK$1.7b offer wins Wong Chuk Hang project
The government has scrapped a tender to build a private hospital on a site in Tai Po because the sole bidder failed to meet conditions attached to the project.
Secretary for Food and Health Dr Ko Wing-man said yesterday the government would consider whether to change the site's land use. It may also change the use for two other sites earmarked for private hospitals by the former administration - in Tung Chung and Tseung Kwan O. These sites have yet to be put out for tender.
But other private hospital bids were more successful. Ko said GHK Hospital won the contract for a plot in Wong Chuk Hang. The consortium - comprising Singapore's Parkway Pantai Holding and Hong Kong's NWS Holdings - will build a hospital on the site, to be run in collaboration with the University of Hong Kong. Ko said three tenders were received for the site, but GHK Hospital's had "the highest score for its service provision proposal and land premium offer".
NWS chairman Henry Cheng Kar-shun said the company would build the Gleneagles Hong Kong Hospital on the site, east of Aberdeen, and it would open in 2017. It offered HK$1.68 billion for the 27,500 square metres of land.
The new hospital would have more than 500 beds and 15 specialities, Ko said. And more than 50 per cent of its services would be provided at a fixed package price - more than the 30 per cent required in the tender conditions. The operators said charges would be "affordable, accessible and transparent", without elaborating. Prices of procedures would be available online, said Dr Tan See Leng, chief executive of Parkway Pantai.
Extra resources would be allocated to the new hospital, rather than taken from nearby Queen Mary Hospital, said HKU medicine dean Professor Lee Sum-ping. "[We are] very excited and looking forward to it," he said.
