Press Releases
SFH on hospital accreditation system
Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) by the Secretary
for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a media session after attending the
Hospital Authority's symposium entitled "From Hospital Accreditation to
Continuous Quality Improvement" today (March 5):
Reporter: (on effectiveness of accreditation system)?
Secretary for Food and Health: There is an increasing trend in the world to
have accreditation for services, like hospital services, and indeed the
International Association for Hospital Standards has also accredited
different types of systems or standards for such accreditation. We have a
partnership with the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards to start
this particular project for Hong Kong. We of course also need to develop our
own surveyor system in this aspect and now we have 20 surveyors who are
being qualified. In the months to come, we expect that the eight hospitals
will be accredited by the third quarter of this year and we will be also
extending this project to include all the other hospitals in the Hospital
Authority as well as the private sector.
Reporter: (on how the accreditation system can help improve the standard of
hospitals)?
Secretary for Food and Health: The accreditation system includes a wide
variety of criteria. There are three major parts. One is on corporate
governance and corporate management. The second part is on the supporting
services and supporting mechanisms and the third, which is the most
important part, is on the clinical standards, clinical supervisions and
clinical systems. With this very wide and comprehensive accreditation, this
will give the hospital a system that they can use as a guideline, they can
use as a way of modulating their work, and also as a way of teaching their
staff. The most important thing is, if every hospital is adopting the same
standard, there is always synergy and competition, at the same time it is
also a learning process for every hospital. So this is a very important
system to improve the standard of the hospital services, and at the same
time to provide an impetus and motivation for people to improve. Naturally,
because of that, we will be able to address many of the adversities and also
adverse conditions in the hospitals more systematically. This will also
allow the management to address some of the problems that are faced by many
of the healthcare workers on a regular basis, like unhappy patients and
people who have complications or adverse effects, and so on.
(Please also refer to the
Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Friday, March 5, 2010
Issued at HKT 18:52
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