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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
The Hospital Authority (HA) Board discussed and endorsed at the Administrative and Operational Meeting today (January 19) the Annual Report on Sentinel and Serious Untoward Events covering the 12 months from October 1, 2010, to September 30, 2011.
The HA Sentinel Event Policy was introduced in October 1, 2007, to further strengthen the reporting, management and monitoring of serious medical incidents in public hospitals. The Policy was revised in January 2010 to mandate the reporting of two more categories of serious untoward events, namely medication error and misidentification that could have led to death or permanent harm to a patient.
In this year's report, a total of 44 sentinel events were reported during the period, comparing to 33 in 2009-10's and 40 events in 2008-09's report. It was noted that the increase is mainly attributed to increase in cases of "patient suicide" and "retained instruments or other material after surgery/ interventional procedure", increases of nine and six cases respectively compared to 2009-10's report.
Serious untoward events are unexpected occurrences that did not cause death or permanent harm to patients but would have had the potential to do so without timely intervention. During the year, 97 serious untoward events were reported, with 88 events related to medication error and nine to patient misidentification.
The Annual Report on Sentinel and Serious Untoward Events can be accessed by health-care workers and the public at www.ha.org.hk/report/sentinel_event.
Ends/Thursday, January 19, 2012
Issued at HKT 18:55
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