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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
The Hospital Authority today (January 30) published two regular publications to promote risk management among healthcare professionals in public hospitals - the "HA Risk Alert" and the "Medication Incident Reporting Programme" (MIRP) Bulletin.
A Hospital Authority spokesman said the authority implemented a Sentinel Event Policy in October 2007 as a risk management and communication initiative to further strengthen the reporting and monitoring of adverse incidents in public hospitals.
"Important lessons of patient safety identified from the root cause analyses during incident investigation will be collated and shared among healthcare professionals in the bi-monthly publication 'HA Risk Alert'."
The latest issue of "HA Risk Alert" features a recent case of tapping of pleural effusion on the wrong side of lung and two cases of maternal death, alongside recommendations to avoid similar events in future. The publication also highlights the new policy on "Claimed HKID Card holder" implemented late last year to prevent confusion of medical records caused by patients who could not present their HKID Cards at consultation. Also shared in this issue is the initial success of using 2D-barcode scanning technology in "Unique Patient Identification" and the bed-side immediate printing and affixing of specimen labels.
"With a particular focus on medication issues, the MIRP was first established in 1994 as a continuous quality improvement initiative through regular case sharing and statistical analysis of reported incidents. In this latest issue, the bulletin highlights four cases for sharing with recommendations to prevent recurrence of incidents of similar nature. The MIRP bulletin is published every six months," the spokesman said.
Both publications have been distributed to the healthcare professionals in public hospitals for continuous quality improvement purpose and can be accessed by the public at http://www.ha.org.hk/riskalert and http://www.ha.org.hk/ho/mirp.
Ends/Friday, January 30, 2009
Issued at HKT 16:59
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