This article examines Hong Kong's experience in modernizing and corporatizing public healthcare governance in order to enhance management autonomy and service efficiency, against the background of a previous regime of centralized departmental control and amid the worldwide trend of new public management. The reform, culminating in the establishment of a hospital authority, is found to be wrought with intense intra-bureaucratic conflict, as well as rivalries between professional and administrative bureaucrats, between professionals of different sectors, and between medical and para-medical providers. Instead of breaking up traditional professional monopoly and opening up the system to non-medical general management, corporatization has resulted in an unplanned entrenchment and re-empowerment of medical professional power.
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Anthony B. L. Cheung (2002) studied this question.