Teaching Hospitals & Clinical Network: Queen Mary Hospital, HA-Affiliated Hospitals, and HKU–Shenzhen Hospital

This article belongs to Module 11 Medicine/Hospitals of the "HKU Wild History" series, focusing on teaching hospitals. It examines the clinical teaching bases of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine — centred on Queen Mary Hospital, extending through the Hong Kong West Cluster and a network of Hospital Authority-affiliated hospitals, and supplemented by one private teaching hospital (Gleneagles) and one joint-venture hospital in mainland China (HKU–Shenzhen Hospital). This article focuses on the hospitals themselves: their institutional set-up, scale, cluster networks, roles as transplant hubs, and public/private positioning. For the Faculty's structure and curriculum, see ./li-ka-shing-faculty-of-medicine-2.md; for research strengths across clinical departments, see ./departments-and-strengths.md.

This module forms part of the 00–12 reference zone and carries no credibility badge. Data is current as of June 2026; facts carrying a year or figure are cited at source, with discrepancies noted where they exist.

# I. An Overview of the Teaching Hospital System

Unlike CUHK's medical faculty, which is anchored in Sha Tin in the New Territories East, HKUMed follows a "Hong Kong Island West" path — using Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam as its core clinical base, radiating across the Hong Kong West Cluster, and delivering bedside teaching and clinical services in multiple public hospitals under the Hospital Authority (HA). Beyond this, there is also one private teaching hospital and one joint-venture hospital in Shenzhen. Understanding HKU's medical footprint requires grasping these layers.

According to HKUMed's official page on "Other HA hospitals and clinics with HKUMed"^※, HKUMed's clinical services and teaching activities extend beyond Queen Mary Hospital to multiple HA hospitals, including Grantham Hospital, the Duchess of Kent Children's Hospital, Tsan Yuk Hospital, hospitals under the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals (Fung Yiu King Hospital, Tung Wah Hospital), and Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital.

# II. Queen Mary Hospital (QMH)

# 2.1 Key Facts

Queen Mary Hospital opened in 1937, replacing the old Government Civil Hospital as the principal acute and accident hospital on Hong Kong Island^※. It underwent major expansions in 1955 and 1983^※; the main ward block, Block K, stands 137 metres tall, making it one of the tallest hospital buildings in Asia^※, while its main building has been listed as a Grade III historic building^※.

# 2.2 A Triad of Clinical Service, Teaching, and Research

As the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine's principal teaching hospital, QMH provides a training and research base for local and overseas postgraduates and undergraduates alike^※. It also serves as a tertiary and quaternary referral centre for many of Hong Kong's most complex and high-end services. According to the HA's QMH introduction^※, these cover:

Organ transplantation, bone marrow transplantation, neonatal intensive care, paediatric surgery, assisted reproduction, cardiothoracic surgery, oral and maxillofacial surgery and dental surgery, burns and reconstructive surgery, and neurosurgery^※.

Two of its "transplant hub" roles are particularly critical:

• Liver transplantation: According to the HA's QMH introduction^※, QMH has been Hong Kong's designated liver transplant centre since 2003 (the official wording is July 2003; other sources cite November 2003 — the discrepancy is noted here). The world-class achievements of QMH's liver transplant team — for example, in adult-to-adult right-lobe living donor liver transplantation — are detailed in ./departments-and-strengths.md.
• Heart transplantation: According to relevant HA materials^※, with the relocation of cardiothoracic surgery services to QMH in July 2008, QMH and Grantham Hospital now co-manage heart transplant patients; Grantham Hospital has long been the central hub for tertiary cardiac transplant referrals.

# III. The Hospital Authority Affiliate Network

Beyond Queen Mary Hospital, HKUMed delivers clinical services and bedside teaching at multiple HA hospitals. According to departmental pages and the HKUMed official summary^※, the main affiliated hospitals include:

# 3.1 The Clinical Relationship between HKU and the Hospital Authority

The relationship between HKUMed and the HA is a form of "university–public healthcare system" partnership: the HA provides public hospital beds, patients, and clinical facilities, while HKU provides the faculty, academic disciplines, and teaching-and-research framework. At QMH and the affiliated hospitals listed above, many professors in clinical departments hold dual roles — university academic appointments and HA honorary/associate consultant positions — teaching, treating patients, and conducting research within the same public hospital. This "clinical service, teaching, and research in one" arrangement is the institutional bedrock of clinical teaching for both of Hong Kong's medical schools: the medical school itself does not directly own public hospitals but, through collaboration with the HA, turns public hospitals into teaching hospitals.

# IV. Gleneagles Hong Kong Hospital: A Private Teaching Hospital

Alongside HKU's "public core" for clinical teaching, there is a private supplement.

According to Gleneagles' official page on its partnership with HKU^※, Gleneagles is a full-scale teaching hospital providing clinical training for HKU medical students; HKUMed acts as the clinical partner, coordinating clinical governance and personnel training. This gives HKU a private, elective, and operationally predictable clinical teaching environment alongside the public-sector QMH — a structural parallel to CUHK's dual-core model of "public Prince of Wales Hospital + private CUHK Medical Centre," although HKU's private arm is a joint venture with a commercial healthcare group rather than wholly university-owned.

# V. HKU–Shenzhen Hospital (2012)

The most distinctive piece of HKU's clinical map lies across the border — in Shenzhen.

# 5.1 "Hong Kong-Style Medicine" Enters the Mainland

HKU–Shenzhen Hospital was born against the backdrop of China's national healthcare reform, launched in 2009. As relevant accounts note, the Shenzhen Municipal Government and HKU began discussions in 2009, signed a cooperation agreement in July 2011, and the hospital opened on 1 July 2012^※. It was seen as an experiment in transplanting a "Hong Kong model of healthcare" into a mainland Chinese public hospital: according to the relevant English Wikipedia entry^※, practices introduced included a refusal to accept hongbao (red envelopes containing informal payments), a relatively conservative approach to prescribing medication and intravenous infusions, and an emphasis on evidence-based medicine over excessive prescription.

# 5.2 Early Finances and Positioning

According to the relevant English Wikipedia entry^※, although the hospital was initially fully government-funded, it once ran a "serious deficit". Around 2014, controversy arose over a "HK$200 million advance payment for clinical management and supervision"; a subsidy arrangement from that year shifted it into profitability, and patient numbers subsequently rose steadily. The hospital's first Chief Executive was Grace Tang Wai-king (鄧惠瓊), succeeded by Lo Chung-mau (盧寵茂) in November 2016^※.

As a reference zone, this archive simply records the above factual narrative based on reliable sources; evaluative commentary involving mainland China's healthcare policies is beyond the scope of this article.

# VI. Cross-References

• Faculty structure, five schools, and the MBBS curriculum: ./li-ka-shing-faculty-of-medicine-2.md
• Research strengths across clinical departments (liver transplantation, infectious diseases, cardiology, etc.): ./departments-and-strengths.md
• Faculty of Dentistry and Prince Philip Dental Hospital: ./faculty-of-dentistry.md
• School of Public Health and School of Chinese Medicine: ./school-of-public-health-and-chinese-medicine.md