Health chief admits Sars flaws
More could have been done by officials to stay in touch with private hospitals
Health chief Yeoh Eng-kiong yesterday acknowledged that there were problems in communication between health authorities and private hospitals during the Sars crisis.
He was speaking a day after the release of an independent report into an outbreak at Baptist Hospital, which concluded that private hospitals had largely been left to fend for themselves during the emergency.
'There is room for improvement in communications with private hospitals,' Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food Dr Yeoh was quoted as saying by a bureau spokesman.
Dr Yeoh emphasised that at the height of the Sars epidemic both the Department of Health and the Hospital Authority were working hard to deal with the disease, the spokesman said.
In Thursday's report into the Baptist outbreak, retired justice of appeal Benjamin Liu Tze-ming's panel concluded that private hospitals seemed to have been regarded as 'an extra, unwanted problem the Department of Health and Hospital Authority did not need'.
The inquiry was triggered in June after then director of health Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun criticised the hospital for being slow to report 'probable and suspected [Sars] cases' to her department and not informing other patients soon enough. Twenty people were infected at the hospital. One man died.
Despite Dr Yeoh's comments, both the Department of Health and the Hospital Authority said yesterday that various steps had been taken to maintain an open line of communication with the private sector. A spokesman for the department said: 'During the Sars outbreaks, [the department] had regularly disseminated to private hospitals guidelines and updates on Sars by fax since March this year. To monitor the situation, [the department] required private hospitals to report patients and staff who were cases or suspected cases of Sars.'
The spokesman added that Sars tests were performed by the Government Virus Unit on 25 samples referred by private hospitals, including Baptist.
A spokesman for the Hospital Authority said that during the Sars crisis, it 'had frequent communication with both private doctors and hospitals' through professional groups, and set up a system to allow private medics to access public patients' clinical details.
Legislator for the medical sector Lo Wing-lok said yesterday that Sars had highlighted a long-simmering problem - that the private sector had been neglected in 'a compartmentalised' health-care system. 'Private hospitals and doctors are looked at as problems, rather than as partners. The private sector can do much more in the whole scheme of things,' Dr Lo said.
Baptist Hospital's board of directors, meanwhile, will meet on Monday to decide whether to release the full report by the commission of inquiry amid public pressure to do so.
The acting chief executive officer of Baptist Hospital, Joseph Lee Chuen-kwu, yesterday said the full 54-page report contained details and names of patients and could infringe on their rights to privacy if it was released.
Professor Lee said that because communication had been the major problem identified in the investigation report, he was now implementing the use of e-mail among departments, which would later be expanded to include all hospital staff. 'We have 1,700 doctors and only 700 of them have faxes, not to mention e-mails. Doctors are very conservative,' he said.
A law professor at the City University, Richard Cullen, said the full report should be released. 'The release of the full report would maximise the clinical and related information placed in the public domain - and thus made accessible to scientists and others working on Sars prevention and basic research.'
Editorial - A12
