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Hospitals productivity gains achievement
Following is a question by the Hon Michael Ho and a written reply by the Secretary for Health and Welfare, Mrs Katherine Fok, in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Question:
It is learnt that, in order to fund new services, the Hospital Authority instructed all public hospitals to raise their productivity in order to achieve savings from the allocations provided to them, at the rates of 1%, 2% and 3% respectively in the past three financial years. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a)
(b)
(c)
whether the Hospital Authority has asked all public hospitals to submit detailed information on the savings achieved through enhancing productivity;
whether the Hospital Authority Board has discussed such information;
and
whether the Hospital Governing Committees of individual public hospitals have discussed such information?
Reply:
The established practice of requiring individual hospitals to achieve productivity gains is a mechanism intended to create incentives for managers to enhance cost-effectiveness by rescheduling of duties, restructuring of work or re- engineering of processes. In many cases, productivity gains are notional and will only lead to better staff deployment or quality of service rather than quantifiable savings.
A reporting framework is in place for the Hospital Authority Head Office to capture and collate information about ways in which productivity gains have been achieved. The Hospital Authority Board has also been kept informed of the broad approach, methodology and parameters adopted by individual hospitals in meeting their targets.
Productivity gains are integral to the annual plan and budget of individual hospitals, both of which are endorsed and monitored by the respective Hospital Governing Committees.
End