The senior management of Hong Kong’s public hospitals will be held accountable for medical incidents, in addition to frontline staff, the Hospital Authority has said, as part of measures to ensure patient safety.
The authority said on Thursday that the power to appoint and dismiss staff would be assigned to hospital chief executives and department heads instead of headquarters, streamlining the process for replacing underperforming employees.
“This means if a manager identifies an underperforming colleague within their team, they can replace them,” Hospital Authority chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling said.
“Those who fail to meet certain standards will be required to join a performance improvement programme for no more than three months.
“If they do not improve to an acceptable level within three months, we will take appropriate disciplinary action based on the situation.”
Patient safety would be listed as one of the critical assessment criteria in staff appraisals, he said.
Fan also said the authority had implemented all of the 31 recommendations proposed last year to improve services after a slew of medical incidents.
Public hospitals have recorded a series of medical blunders in recent years, with the health minister pointing to a “systemic issue” and instructing the authority to conduct a comprehensive review.
Fan said that when medical incidents happened in the past, there was uncertainty among staff as to who was accountable for patient safety.
“For example, some department heads may think he is not responsible for patient safety, and it is the job of the patient safety manager,” he said.
“Now we can make it clear to everyone that the ultimate accountability lies with the hospital chief executives and the department heads.”
He also said that in the past, replacing an underperforming doctor involved complicated procedures, such as requiring the authority’s headquarters to be notified and arranging for another department to take the staff in.
Tony Ko Pat-sing, the authority’s chief executive, said the body would set up committees to conduct comprehensive assessments of senior management officers’ performance.
“In our appraisals ... we will add patient safety as an independent core assessment item so that we can clearly assess their performance in this crucial area,” he said.
“How colleagues handle patient safety incidents will be recorded and reflected in their regular performance records.”
Fan said employees would be given the right to apply for an appeal if they disagreed with the appraisals.
Another measure would focus on improving the authority’s rewards and penalties system, such as potentially adding an extra salary point for strong performers, he said.
Fan said the authority would also establish various levels of penalties such as verbal or written warnings, a performance improvement programme, postponing or suspending pay increments, setting limits to promotions, suspending senior management appointments and dismissal.
He said health officials had also proposed the concept of “more contribution, more gain” to further align job performance with the system’s pay structure, adding that they would conduct consultation with employees. - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
