Hospital Authority's secretive handling of medical misconduct damages trust in public health care
Neville Sarony says the Hospital Authority's practice of keeping medical misconduct out of public view creates unnecessary doubts about the professional standards of our public doctors
The failure of the Hospital Authority to refer a single case of potential misconduct to the Medical Council for investigation in the past two years is deeply disturbing. Rather than indicating a faultless level of competence of our public doctors, who generally are of high quality, it speaks of the arrogance of their employer in bypassing the professional governing body of all doctors in Hong Kong.
Shielding or even appearing to shield its doctors by in-house determination of what constitutes misconduct brings the authority into conflict with the council.
Doctors in the authority's employ are just as answerable to the council as doctors in private practice. However, the authority's established practice is to refer only cases it regards as "appropriate" for the council to look into.
The net result of this secretive filtering is that for 2012 and 2013, not one case was referred for independent investigation. The absurdity of the authority's lame excuse that it is safeguarding patients' privacy is self-evident.
The absence of referrals is not evidence of an absence of incompetence or gross negligence among its doctors. The recent case of a United Christian Hospital pathologist is a timely reminder.
Misconduct in the clinical context includes the obvious, such as indecent assaults and gross breaches of accepted professional norms. Though the same instance may render the doctor liable to pay damages for professional negligence, what is under consideration is misconduct as a breach of the professional code of practice. The two should not be confused.