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Following is a question by the Hon Andrew Cheng and a written reply by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, in the Legislative Council today (January 6):
Question:
According to recent media reports, the New Territories West Cluster (NTWC) to which Castle Peak Hospital belongs has arranged overseas duty visits for a number of senior healthcare staff of the hospital, for the purpose of introducing the management mode of the Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan. Regarding the arrangements made by the hospital clusters under the Hospital Authority (HA) for healthcare staff to undertake study visits and receive training abroad, will the Government inform this Council whether it knows:
(a) the number of staff who had been arranged by NTWC to go abroad for study visits, training or participating in activities such as seminars, for the purpose of introducing the aforesaid management mode, and the total number of working hours lost as a result; the amount of expenditure incurred on the study visits, the destinations involved, and the number and ranks of staff who participated in the visits by destination; whether HA has a mechanism for assessing the impact on the frontline work caused by a number of healthcare staff being absent from their work positions to participate in such activities;
(b) in respect of each cluster, the expenditure incurred on staff training last year and the percentage of the amount in the total expenditure, the number of staff who participated in such training and, among them, the number of those who participated in overseas study visits and training, as well as the expenditure involved; and
(c) the respective expenditure incurred by HA last year on overseas study visits and training for its senior executives, doctors at the ranks of Senior Medical Officer or above, doctors at other ranks, nurses and allied health staff; the average expenditure incurred in respect of each of these staff members; and regarding the study visit or training activity which incurred the highest expenditure, of its purpose, the amount of expenditure incurred as well as the number of participants and their respective ranks?
Reply:
President,
The information provided by the Hospital Authority (HA) in response to the question is set out below.
(a) Last year, the New Territories West Cluster (NTWC) organised seven overseas visits to places such as Guangzhou, Singapore and Japan with a total expenditure of $215,568 for the purpose of adopting advanced management concepts to streamline its work procedures and enhance service efficiency and quality. There are a total of 43 participants of the visits, including eight doctors, 22 nurses and 13 staff members of other grades. The number of man-days involved was about 112. The expenditure per participant on average for these visits was about $5,013. The NTWC has always put its services to patients at the top of its priority and all training activities have been conducted on the condition that the patient services will not be affected. Under the existing mechanism for approving training activities, HA will assess whether the training activities will have any impact on staff deployment in frontline departments. As most of the participants in the above seven overseas visits were department heads and ward managers responsible for supervision of frontline staff, the visits had no direct impact on the provision of frontline services. Upon completion of the visits, participating staff will apply the advanced management concepts in the operation of their departments and wards to further improve the services to patients.
(b) In 2008-09, the total expenditure incurred by the HA Head Office and various hospital clusters on staff training and development, including local and overseas training, was about $66 million, constituting about 0.2% of the total funding allocated to HA in that year. There were a total of about 179,000 participants in various training in that year, among which 1,500 were staff of different grades participating in overseas training. The total expenditure of these overseas training was about $15 million.
(c) All professional and executive staff in HA have opportunity for training appropriate to their rank, experience and job responsibility. In 2008-09, the expenditure on overseas training for HA senior executives (including Cluster Chief Executives, Hospital Chief Executives and Directors at HA Head Office) was around $17,000 per person on average whereas the expenditure incurred in this regard for staff from other grades was around $10,000 per person on average.
In 2008-09, the training activity with the highest expenditure was the study visit organised for the "Ward Based Work Review" in February 2009. Seventeen departmental heads and managers from the HA Head Office and the seven clusters were arranged to receive training in "Quality Healthcare Management" in the United Kingdom and to visit local hospitals to study how patients' satisfaction and operational effectiveness could be enhanced in the daily delivery of healthcare services. The total expenditure incurred for this training was $602,750 with an expenditure of about $35,000 per participant on average.
All of the above staff training and development activities were held with the aim to enhance the knowledge and skills of staff, improve their performance and productivity to meet current and future operational needs.
Ends/Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Issued at HKT 15:11
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