Winning back public faith one patient at a time
The Sars outbreak was one of the hardest tests for the Baptist Hospital in its 40-year history. A patient was killed and the hospital has been engaged in a lawsuit.
But the hospital's chief executive Joseph Lee Chuen-kwun said he and his staff had recovered from the crisis, and with public confidence restored, patient numbers are rebounding. Two Sars outbreaks at the 585-bed hospital in Kowloon Tong last year caused at least one death and the infection of about 20 people, including 13 medical workers.
A hospital-commissioned report criticised the management for delays in reporting 'probable and suspected Sars' cases to the Department of Health, and for not informing patients of such cases sooner.
The widow of the deceased victim last month asked the courts to force the hospital to release the full report to help her pursue a negligence lawsuit over her husband's death.
Dr Lee admitted that the hospital had learned a painful lesson from the outbreak. 'Shortly after those incidents, some patients did not want to come to our hospital for treatment, but now their confidence is back. I think that is partly because many families have been using our services from one generation to another.'
Dr Lee, the former dean of medicine at the Chinese University and a pathologist, took charge of the hospital in June last year after the hospital sacked Tsang Chin-wah in June over the handling of the Sars cases.
He said the hospital has since strengthened its infection-control measures and isolation facilities. Two high-standard isolation rooms were opened last year modelled after the facilities at Princess Margaret Hospital, the designated public infectious-disease hospital.
There are nine other single rooms with negative air-pressure conditioning, which can also be used as wards for infectious diseases or fever cases.
Dr Lee said the 11 new isolation rooms were built despite the fact that the hospital, under a consensus reached with the government, would not take confirmed Sars patient.
'We have to prepare for the worst. Just in case there is a city-wide Sars outbreak again, we would be able to cope with it.'
While waiting time at public hospitals is getting longer because of shrinking resources and increasing workload, business has recovered at almost all of the 12 private hospitals.
Patients at public hospitals now have to wait years for surgery. A cataract operation, for example, can be delayed up to three years; a circumcision for six years.
The occupancy rate at Baptist Hospital has increased from an average of 50 to 60 per cent last year, to 80 to 90 per cent, meaning that most wards are full.
To strengthen co-operation between public and private facilities, Baptist Hospital and three other private hospitals are discussing with the Hospital Authority setting up an information kiosk at the nearby Queen Elizabeth Hospital to promote their services. The others are St Teresa's, Evangel and Union hospitals.
Under the proposal, patients who want shorter queues and more personalised services can check at the kiosk about the services provided by the four private hospitals.
To increase its attractiveness, the hospital has been promoting 13 types of 'surgical packages' to patients referred by the Hospital Authority since last year.
These offer a fixed price for a specific kind of surgery with a determined length of stay.
For example, an operation to remove a uterus that included a four-day stay would cost $34,000 while a circumcision would cost $9,000 with a one-day stay.
There will be extra charges for additional days in hospital and treatment for complications.
Dr Lee said room for a price cut was very small.
'We offered a 10 per cent discount from August to December last year to celebrate the hospital's 40th anniversary, but then we found that we could not even make a break-even.'
