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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
The Chief Executive of the Hospital Authority (HA), Mr Shane Solomon, today (January 5) made the following statement on the Investigation Report of Caritas Medical Centre (CMC):
The HA has released the report on the Caritas Medical Centre (CMC) patient incident that occurred two weeks ago.
The report identifies a number of inadequacies in the handling of the incident. These inadequacies occurred at the initial inquiry counter, the Accident and Emergency Department, and in the subsequent public handling of the incident.
I accept the report as a factual account of what happened around the time of the event and the operational policies in place at the time of the incident.
I welcome the remedial actions that the CMC will take to avoid such incidents happening both within the non-clinical areas of the hospital and in the vicinity of the hospital.
The report is an internal investigation report of the management of CMC. It cannot deal with the matter of responsibilities among the various parties involved, including staff and management.
So the HA will establish a high-level Special Review Committee comprising board members to assess responsibilities for the incident and determine corresponding human resources actions as required. The Special Review Committee will be chaired by myself as the Chief Executive of the HA, and include the following members:
* Dr Anthony Ho (Chairman, HA Human Resources Committee)
* Professor Fok Tai-fai (Chairman, HA Medical Services Development Committee)
* Professor David Cheung (Chairman, CMC Hospital Governing Committee)
The Special Review Committee will determine any necessary human resources actions within six weeks.
The incident holds lessons for the rest of the HA that require some further actions.
First, a set of "general principles for handling persons requiring emergency medical assistance in the vicinity of HA hospitals and clinics" was promulgated today. Each hospital and clinic is required to have a locally customised and flexible response plan to deal with emergencies in the vicinity. The response plan must be consistent with our first priority which is to save peopleˇ¦s lives with all HA staff offering all reasonable assistance in an emergency.
Second, the HA recognises that these response plans will require special equipment. At present the HA has 1,600 defibrillators; however, these are not easily transportable nor usable by laymen. So HA hospitals, clinics and key reception areas will be provided with portable Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). Currently the HA has about 25 such pieces of equipment. Preliminary estimates are that the HA will require an additional 200 AEDs, at a cost of around $4 million.
The CMC report is open about the details of the incident, accepts that there are inadequacies, and proposes a series of actions to prevent this in the future.
The Special Review Committee will look further into apportioning responsibility between those involved, and what human resources measures may be necessary. The initiatives across the HA will prepare all public hospitals for any such unfortunate incident in the future, whether in the general public areas of the hospital or in the vicinity of the hospital.
In closing, can I say that Caritas Medical Centre has a long and fine record of serving the community with care and compassion. This incident does not reflect the true spirit of CMC whose front-line staff are committed to the service of patients.
Ends/Monday, January 5, 2009
Issued at HKT 19:26
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