United Christian Hospital has highest ratio of operation deaths, says report

United Christian Hospital in Kwun Tong performed worst in pre-booked operations of all public hospitals, a report revealed yesterday, with the highest ratio of unexpected patient deaths during and after surgery.

The annual report did not give a specific reason for the problems at United Christian. But it suggested a lack of manpower was to blame for poor outcomes at the worst-ranked hospital for emergency operations, North District Hospital in Sheung Shui.

However, Professor Paul Lai, director of the surgical outcomes monitoring and improvement programme run by Hospital Authority, stressed that the results should not worry patients.

"It only means that, statistically, the outcomes of some hospitals have been less than perfect compared to the others," Lai said.

"It is not meant to rank hospitals. This is only a statistical tool to help us review the performance of a hospital."

The programme, which started in 2008, looks into a series of factors to assess the performance standard of all 17 major public hospitals in the city.

The latest report recorded 24,321 operations, of which 30 per cent were emergency procedures, between July 1, 2013, and June 30 last year. The overall crude mortality rate was 7.7 per cent for planned operations and 0.5 per cent for emergencies.