All the Department Q&RM Coordinators and Panel Specialists are committed to making their best effort to achieve transformation.

he HKEC Quality & Risk Management (CQ&RM) Office was established in 2006 under the leadership of the Cluster Service Director, Senior Nursing Officer and Senior Hospital Administrator. Its role is to build an integrated management structure to formulate and drive quality and safety initiatives and to increase clinical and organisational effectiveness. To achieve this, it engages the key stakeholders at all levels who are responsible for quality standards and high-risk areas.

The Office has succeeded in creating clear reporting lines, a well-defined reporting format and a multi-communication flow between senior management, the Cluster Q&RM Committee, Functional and Divisional Committees. These enable information about quality and risk issues to flow between all the parties concerned in a more systematic way.

The Office has already scored significant improvements in the following areas:

1 . Strengthening the role of doctors by increasing their participation
To increase their involvement in incident and complaint management, a number of clinicians have been appointed as Department Q&RM Coordinators and Panel Specialists who participate in case reviews. This form of empowerment encourages clinicians to take ownership of quality and safety issues and to play a greater role in addressing them.

2 . Enhancing learning and experience sharing
A Cluster Incident Review Panel has been set up to strengthen the management's focus on systems and processes in identified high-risk cases. A multi-channel communication system has also been put in place, so that lessons learnt can be shared with colleagues at various levels.

3 . Training leaders for transformation
Doctors now actively participate in designing, developing and implementing improvement programmes, such as correct patient identification, clinical handover and credentialing. The change process is creating leaders at all levels, thus helping to translate goals into operational realities.