Clinical audits and external accreditations will be introduced at the University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Hospital, as among 'things not conventionally done at mainland medical institutes', the university's dean of medicine said.
Professor Lee Sum-ping said the HKU medical faculty and the Shenzhen government had agreed to a 'level of flexibility' in managing the new centre with 'novel and creative' ideas.
The hospital, built and funded by Shenzhen, will be the HKU's second teaching hospital after Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam. Supported by the Ministry of Health, the ground-breaking project will be a showcase for national health care reform.
The hospital will open its first 600 beds in August next year. It will become fully operational, with 2,000 beds, in 2013. HKU vice-chancellor Tsui Lap-chee said earlier that the hospital, now known as Binhai Hospital, would be 'run in an HKU way'.
Lee said management of the new centre 'will not be compelled to conform with the conventional standards' of any mainland hospital.
The hospital would audit clinical performance by holding regular patient mortality and morbidity reviews - a standard quality assurance practice at all Hong Kong hospitals.
'If something happens to a patient, the peer groups will examine whether the patient has been properly taken care of,' Lee said. 'The doctors and nurses taking care of that patient will have to be answerable to a board of peers, not to a legal body, not to a bunch of angry patients, but to their peers who understand the scenario and limits of medicine.'