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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
The Hospital Authority (HA) today (July 30) published two regular publications to promote risk management among healthcare professionals in public hospitals - the "HA Risk Alert" and the "Medication Incidents Reporting Programme" (MIRP) Bulletin.
The HA has implemented a Sentinel Event Policy since 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 are collated and shared among healthcare professionals in the bi-monthly publication "HA Risk Alert".
The latest issue of "HA Risk Alert" features five cases of retained instruments or material after surgery or interventional procedure; and a case of omission of anti-viral prophylaxis. Subsequent to in-depth root cause analyses and incident investigation, recommendations are made and shared in this publication to avoid similar events in future.
With a 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 six cases for sharing, with recommendations to prevent recurrence of incidents of a similar nature. The MIRP bulletin is published every six months.
Both risk management publications have been distributed to healthcare professionals in public hospitals for continuous quality improvement and can be accessed by the public at www.ha.org.hk/riskalert and www.ha.org.hk/ho/mirp .
Ends/Friday, July 30, 2010
Issued at HKT 18:38
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