The senior management of Hong Kong’s public hospitals will be held accountable for medical incidents, in addition to frontline staff, the Hospital Authority has said, as part of measures to ensure patient safety.
The authority said on Thursday that the power to appoint and dismiss staff would be assigned to hospital chief executives and department heads instead of headquarters, streamlining the process for replacing underperforming employees.
“This means if a manager identifies an underperforming colleague within their team, they can replace them,” Hospital Authority chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling said.
“Those who fail to meet certain standards will be required to join a performance improvement programme for no more than three months.
“If they do not improve to an acceptable level within three months, we will take appropriate disciplinary action based on the situation.”
Patient safety would be listed as one of the critical assessment criteria in staff appraisals, he said.
