The Hospital Authority (HA) on Friday said it will proactively invite external experts to analyse the reasons behind medical incidents at public hospitals.

A review committee released a report last year on the management of the public hospital system, putting forward 31 improvement recommendations for the HA.

Its chief executive Tony Ko said the authority will finish all follow-up work by the end of June, which includes strengthening its incident response team and inviting external experts to join its root cause analysis panel.

“We hope that in future we are more proactive to get relevant experts, if necessary, from the outside, in addition to having experts internally to look into different aspects,” he said.

“Because now, the medical care is very complicated. They can be from different aspects… It’s so diversified that the expertise is not necessary within the Hospital Authority.”

Ko added that the HA is gradually adopting more measures to minimise risks and prevent incidents, such as introducing warming devices to ensure patients undergoing surgery will not get hypothermia.

“We are actively looking into new technologies that can help us to further improve, not only reduce the risk, but also improve the quality of care,” he said.

“That’s also the reason why we, when appropriate, want to invite external experts. Because sometimes external experts are more up-to-date and know more about what is happening around, what kind of products or what kind of technologies are available.”