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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
More than 3,000 experts and professionals from Hong Kong, the Mainland as well as the international healthcare sector gathered at the two-day annual Hospital Authority (HA) Convention 2008 which is being held today (May 5) and tomorrow (May 6) to share innovative ideas for improvement of the health of the community and also help shape the direction of healthcare development in the years to come.
The main theme of this year's HA Convention is "A New Era of Patient Care", which is underpinned by the following sub-themes:
- Healthcare Funding Options
- Patient Satisfaction and Engagement
- Quality Patient Care
- Clinical Innovations
- Impact of Work Reform
The HA Convention 2008 was officially opened by the Vice-Minister of Health, Dr Wang Guoqiang; the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Henry Tang; and the Secretary for Food & Health, Dr York Chow this morning at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Accompanying the Vice-Minister, the Chief Secretary and the Secretary for Food and Health at the Opening Ceremony were HA chairman, Mr Anthony Wu, and the Chief Executive, Mr Shane Solomon.
In his welcoming address, Mr Wu echoed the theme of the Convention "A New Era of Patient Care" and remarked that launching the first phase of the consultation exercise on healthcare reform two months ago marked the beginning of a new chapter in Hong Kong's healthcare system.
"Meanwhile, we are consolidating the views expressed by our staff, Hospital Governing Committee members, patient groups and other stakeholders for our response to the Government on the healthcare reform proposals."
Mr Wu also said that regardless of the way forward, the Hospital Authority could not do without a strong and sustainable workforce, "we put in place a new career progression structure for our doctors and launched a number of pilot programmes of Doctor Work Reform. Currently we are finalising a career progression model for our nurses."
Mr Wu thanked the Government for pledging to increase the recurrent expenditure on healthcare from the present 15% to 17% in 2011-12.
In delivering his Keynote Speech "Where in the World is the Hospital Authority?", the authority's Chief Executive, Mr Shane Solomon expressed his views on how reform initiatives will impact on the Hospital Authority and what it must do to have a strong place in whatever reform environment was created, and that was to continue providing value to the patient and value to society.
He pointed out that the Healthcare Reform Consultation Document detailed two imbalances in Hong Kong¡¯s healthcare system: first, too much emphasis on acute curative care, and not enough on prevention and primary care; second, too much reliance on the public hospital system.
"So the impact of healthcare reform should be to reduce demand on HA and create a more stable funding base for the future," he said.
Mr Solomon perceived that even with a better public-private balance, the authority would still have a central role in the future, "The Hospital Authority should continue to be good value for the patient and the society, providing the universal safety net."
He believed that the future HA should help patients have more choices, both within HA and within the private sector.
"In the future world of healthcare financing, HA should consider offering some new choices above its core evidence-based service offering for those willing to pay more, maybe using their medical savings account or their insurance cover," he said, adding that more public-private partnerships would emerge to create new choices.
"HA must continue to be 'good value' for the patient and for society." He said HA should focus on four dimensions of "value to the patient". "The first two are about our professional and clinical competence. The other two are about our caring dimension."
In explaining the first dimension "First, Do No Harm", Mr Solomon said that HA introduced the Sentinel Event Reporting System which had nine events that caused serious harm or death, and were believed to be largely preventable. "Our purpose is to disclose so we can learn how to prevent these incidents from happening right across HA," he said.
In the second dimension, "introduce quality programmes and systems", he reminded the audience that there were a number of quality programmes emerging in place in HA to improve quality and patient safety, which include:
- the "Clean Hands for Health" campaign to reduce hospital acquired infections
- the 3 checks 5 rights programme to reduce medication errors
- clinical audits to monitor patient outcomes in different hospitals
- 2-D bar coding to reduce patient identification errors, initially in ordering pathology tests
- moving towards internationally recognised hospital accreditation
- inpatient medication order entry
- modernising equipment
The third dimension is the need to train and retain additional staff particularly doctors and nurses, so that there are more reasonable workloads and more time for communication.
Lastly, Mr Solomon appealed to staff to "sit in the patient's seat, and imagine what is best for them".
"Our mission is ultimately to return people home to live a healthy and normal life in the community. If we cannot do that, then we should turn our efforts to palliation, pain control, and helping the family accept the patient¡¯s next journey."
He said that sitting in the patient's seat meant understanding that they may have many HA doctors, private doctors and NGOs involved in their care, so making sure the links between them are smooth was important, "as chronic conditions increase, such continuity of care will become more important."
In ensuring that HA's service is value for the society, HA will need to continue managing its resources as well. This will involve:
- Keeping people healthy and supporting them to be able to live in the community.
- Embracing information technology and automation.
- Reforming our workforce. Nurses should not be doing jobs that clerks can do. But nurses and allied health professionals can do more highly skilled jobs, such as independent practice clinics.
- Introducing a new casemix funding system that ties workload to patient load.
- Continuing to use our economy of scale for purchasing of drugs, medical supplies, and equipment.
- Keeping management overheads to a minimum, so resources are directed to the frontline.
In his concluding remarks, Mr Solomon highlighted the motto of HA's annual plan this year: "Strong Team£®SMART Care."
"Achieving value for society should be about working smarter and as teams, not forcing front-line colleagues to have unreasonable workloads," he said.
Ends/Monday, May 5, 2008
Issued at HKT 17:02
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