Opinion | Cut the red tape and free up hospital staff

Bureaucracies the world over are the butt of criticism over red tape. Some of it serves the purposes of opponents of “big government”, or of private-sector interests who think they could do a more efficient job of delivering services than the government and its agencies – and make a profit. Bureaucracies are an easy target, according to the size of their taxpayer-funded budgets and the demand for their services.

The Hospital Authority is a case in point, despite its reputation for delivering a high standard of affordable universal health services. Given that it has a budget of more than HK$60 billion for recurring running costs alone, excluding capital spending, and that the recent summer flu peak stretched medical staff and bed numbers to breaking point, the authority ought to sit up and take notice when criticism of crippling red tape comes from well-placed insiders.

Two years to install computer icon: hospital red tape ‘going too far’

Professor Gabriel Leung, dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, set the ball rolling. Leung, also an HA board member, questioned whether repeated meetings of management and staff on the same issues benefited patients. According to Leung, this culture had resulted in a bloated structure that warranted reflection by management. His concerns were echoed a day later by another board member, Charlie Yip Wing-tong, who said frontline doctors should be less involved in meetings. A top public hospital manager who preferred to remain anonymous also said meetings took up a lot of frontline health-care staff’s time. He cited the preparation of an annual plan setting out targets for a group of hospitals. The problem was that hospitals often failed to secure the necessary resources for such projects, resulting in time spent on preparation and meetings being wasted. Medical sector lawmaker Dr Pierre Chan, who works in an HA hospital, cited the most egregious example – the need for nurses to fill in 10 forms for newly admitted patients under the hospital accreditation programme, when a single form would suffice.

Considering these self-imposed handicaps, it could be argued, perversely, that the HA does a pretty good job. But how much better might the perception of its performance be, and how less stressed its frontline professionals, if they were left with more time for their primary jobs of caring for patients. That ought to be an incentive to review an apparent imbalance of consultation and action.