A senior health official has credited an exodus of public medical workers to private hospitals for a steep fall in the number of serious misadventures at private institutions. Responding as lawmakers questioned a record low of three such incidents this year, deputy director of health Gloria Tam Lai-fun said government monitoring had produced no evidence of any cover-up. 'We think the many public doctors and nurses switching to work in private hospitals have improved their services and it might be the reason behind the falling number,' she said. Tam was speaking at a meeting of the health services panel three weeks after the failure of Baptist Hospital to report a newborn baby being dropped on the floor during delivery aroused a public outcry over regulation of private hospitals. She said that as well as being required to report serious events within 24 hours, private hospitals were subjected to routine and spot checks by the Health Department. 'We do not see there has been anything covered up,' she said as lawmakers questioned the sharp fall in reported serious cases. Government figures showed that three cases of errors involving death or serious injuries were reported by private hospitals this year compared with 10 in 2010, 52 in 2009 and 33 in 2008. 'Over the past few years, private hospitals' workload has increased hugely, with so many Hong Kong people using their services and mainland women giving birth,' lawmaker Cheung Man-kwong said. 'It is a bit strange to see that the reported cases have fallen sharply while there are more patients being treated.' Public hospitals are losing doctors and nurses at a rate of 5 per cent a year. Some internal medicine departments are seeing turnover of 10 to 25 per cent, the highest over the past 20 years. Panel member Andrew Cheng Kar-foo said the penalties for private hospitals failing to report such mishaps were too lenient. 'It is ridiculous that a hospital will only be fined HK$1,000 for failing to report,' Cheng said. Tam said: 'We are now scrutinising what should be done to improve monitoring.' She stressed there was no evidence such cases were being swept under the carpet. Meanwhile, Secretary for Food and Health Dr York Chow Yat-ngok said he was worried that some pregnant mainlanders were giving the wrong due date in a bid to slip through the quota system. He noted that the women could cause chaos in hospitals by turning up much earlier than was necessary. The government announced this year that it would cap the number of births by non-local mothers at 34,400 in 2012 - about 31,000 at private hospitals and 3,400 at public hospitals.
