‘TripAdvisor for hospitals’ uses patient reviews to rank Hong Kong health care outcomes
New website Hospital Advisor will give all Hong Kong hospitals, public and private, a ‘Quality of Care’ score and empower patients to make more considered decisions on hospital care
An online platform to rank Hong Kong hospitals’ quality of care based on patient reviews was launched today. HospitalAdvisor.org.hk covers all 41 public and 11 private hospitals in the city and seeks to empower patients to make more considered decisions about their hospital care.
The website, which is available in English, traditional and simplified Chinese, was developed through a collaboration between the Harvard Global Health Institute, Hong Kong University’s School of Public Health, and local non-profit social policy think tank The Zubin Foundation.
It is the brainchild of Shalini Mahtani, co-founder of The Zubin Foundation, whose first child, Zubin, died suddenly at the age of three from pneumococcal meningitis in May 2009. Motivated to make some good come from her son’s death, Mahtani created Hospital Advisor to empower patients with more information on Hong Kong’s hospitals.
“When we buy a phone or decide which university to go to, there are loads of different surveys and rankings that tell us this is better than that. But it struck me as odd that in perhaps the most important decision we’ll make that will affect our lives directly – the hospital we choose – there was no information,” says Mahtani, a fourth-generation Hongkonger who’s well known for her work on corporate responsibility, diversity and inclusion.