The Hospital Authority (HA) today announced that it will set up a committee to review the maintenance of medical equipment and facilities in public hospitals and provide advice on the authority's policy direction for handling such issues.

The authority will invite experts from different professions, including HA Board members, and engineering and corporate communication experts, to join the committee to assist in improving the policy direction for managing relevant issues in hospitals.

The committee will review the response and overall management process of several recent incidents related to hospital maintenance work, the prevailing procedures and reporting mechanism between the HA Head Office and hospitals as well as the internal and external communications when these incidents occurred in public hospitals. It will then offer recommendations to the authority within three months.

Meanwhile, the authority has requested all its clusters and hospitals to complete a preliminary inspection of the facilities within one month and strengthen the existing facility maintenance work.

Stating that the safety of patients and staff is its utmost concern, the authority reiterated that it has been proactively and stringently following up on issues related to hospital safety. It will also step up its supervision of contractors' maintenance work to ensure the safety of the hospital environment.