Hong Kong's hospital bosses have vowed to clarify the responsibility of staff of all ranks and strengthen accountability of senior management when it comes to medical incidents, after a review committee found the roles of workers are not clearly established. Instructed by the administration following a string of medial blunders, the Hospital Authority (HA) set up a review committee a few months ago to look into the operations and management of public hospitals. Among 31 recommendations put forward to the authority, the review committee suggested public hospitals enhance top-level oversight for quality and safety issues, as well as define the roles, responsibilities and authority at various levels. The HA said it would look into introducing a reward-and-penalty system when assessing staff. "I think it's important to more clearly delineate the roles and responsibilities of each of the staff at different levels," said HA chief executive Tony Ko on Friday. "The committee also recommend that in terms of the performance assessment of individual staff, we have to put into elements of quality and safety. So we'll be more explicit in terms of the performance assessment of the individual staff to see how they can reflect in part of the performance and obviously subsequently will be related to the accountability issues." A high-level reform committee, to be led by the authority's chairman Henry Fan, will be formed. The permanent secretary for health and the under secretary will join the committee, to give timely policy directions and guidance. Fan said the group is solely focusing on improving governance and accountability, while other issues would be worked on as quickly as possible. "However, having said that, there are some issues. For example, the recommendation that we should change the culture of HA, which would probably take some time," Fan said. "Culture, by definition, is deep-rooted, and we can't expect to change that overnight. So we will do our best. But what we want is to try to make changes as quickly as possible." Other recommendations include strengthening clinical mentorship and supervision, and encouraging staff to report incidents.
