Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority brings in experts to help curb medical blunders

Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority has brought in specialists to help reduce the number of medical blunders, while vowing to strengthen public communication as part of measures introduced following a performance review.

Dr Tony Ko Pat-sing, the authority’s chief executive, said on Friday that the measures aimed to improve its response to mistakes and enhance service quality through the use of technology.

External experts were invited to join the authority’s investigation committee to analyse the cause of incidents and look for solutions. Their expertise centred on finding ways to prevent, detect and correct human errors.

“We place special emphasis on root-cause analysis because we want to learn from accidents and must find out their root causes so we can make improvements,” said Dr Michael Wong Lap-gate, the authority’s director of quality and safety.

“Therefore, we have introduced some external experts.”

Dr Linda Yu Wai-ling, service director of quality and safety for the authority’s hospitals in the eastern New Territories, also said the analysis was important.