Public hospitals in Hong Kong have adopted new guidelines to “clarify facts” and inform affected patients before disclosing medical blunders. But a patients’ concern group said the mechanism may “rationalise” the withholding or delayed release of information.
The Hospital Authority (HA) would no longer announce medical mishaps first, instead following a new “three-step” mechanism that was announced and came into effect on Thursday.
Under the new guidelines, in case of a medical incident, the HA would clarify all facts related to the incident internally, and explain the situation to the affected patients and their families, before making a public announcement.
HA chairperson Henry Fan told the press on Thursday that the announcements of medical blunders were sometimes made in a rush. If the incident were disclosed before the details were confirmed, there may end up being discrepancies between statements, which would “cause chaos” and confuse the general pubic.
Fan also pointed to the patients’ privacy and said individuals affected would be upset if the HA announced the mishaps before notifying and explaining the incident to them and their family members.
“[T]heir privacy is more important than the public’s right to know. The society’s right to know still exists, but just a bit later, I believe the public would generally accept it. It may be one or two days slower, but you would receive a message that is accurate,” Fan said in Cantonese.
Fan pledged that the HA would still announce medical mishaps as soon as possible, but the delay in releasing information would depend on the severity of individual incident. He added the HA would set up a team of spokespeople, who would be trained to explain medical mishaps to family members and the media.
Speaking on Commercial Radio on Friday, lawyer Lam Chi-yau, who also chairs Hong Kong Patients’ Voices, said the disclosure of medical blunders would not invade the patient’s privacy, because the authority did not need to reveal their personal information.
The concern group chief said the public’s right to know was important, as the HA handled the health and lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong. Members of the public also had the right to monitor the operation of public hospitals, he said.
“Generally speaking, having these mechanisms means rationalising the withholding or delayed release of information in the future,” he said.
Lam added releasing preliminary information about a mishap, such as the nature of the incident, would be important to hospital staff as well. It would make them more cautious about their work, he said.
In 2007, the HA rolled out a serious medical incident reporting policy to standardise the methods and procedures for handling serious medical incidents across its clusters. Under the policy, each cluster or hospital must report serious medical incidents to the HA within 24 hours using an internal reporting system.
Incidents that must be reported included incorrect medication prescription that led to permanent loss of body functions or death of the patient, as well as surgery or interventional procedures performed on the wrong patient or the wrong body part.
The policy was updated in 2010 to distinguish “sentinel events” and “serious untoward events” at hospitals, which the HA would inform the public about in their risk alerts issued every three months.
