The Hospital Authority has proposed forming a central investigation committee and establishing a safety inspection mechanism to handle major medical incidents.

Hospital Authority Director (Quality & Safety) Dr Leung Pak-yin today said investigations of major medical incidents are currently handled by the concerned hospitals or hospital clusters.

Under the proposed arrangement, a central committee comprising senior staff from all hospital clusters will take up the work. The move will ensure the investigators' independency, enhancing the investigation efficiency.

Safety inspection

To prevent medical incidents the authority also plans to put in place a safety inspection mechanism which differs from the existing routine clinical inspection.

The new system will help the authority identify procedures with high risk and formulate strategies to eliminate possible loopholes and inadequacies. Every detail of medical systems, work procedures and facilities will be under close observation.

Dr Leung hoped the proposal will improve communication amongst the authority, hospital management and frontline staff on patient safety issues.

The authority also plans to expand its medical incidents reporting mechanism and will soon conduct a patient satisfaction survey and revamp the current complaints system.

Advanced technology such as 2D barcodes will also be adopted more extensively to reduce human errors such as patient misidentification and mix-ups of blood specimens. Other identification technology such as radio-frequency identification in babies and bodies, for example, will also be explored.

Disciplinary actions

To address concern about the due process and consistency in disciplinary actions among different hospital clusters and hospitals, the existing human resources policy will be reviewed.

A central mechanism for reviewing all cases retrospectively will be set up to share lessons learned and best practices. There will also be a consistency checklist against which line management can check the nature and severity of issues against the options of discipline. For very serious clinical incidents, cases will be reviewed by a central Staff Disciplinary Committee.

The authority will consult staff on the proposals in the coming three months and will implement the finalised measures as soon as possible.