GHK Connect - Issue. 62 (September 2021)

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past few years, we have been continuously developing more services and bringing in the latest medical technologies and facilities to enhance our capability in providing top-quality care to patients. Recently, our Radiology Department has launched the new Digital Subtraction Angiography (DSA) Suite to facilitate examination and diagnosing of different vascular diseases and conditions. With this new facility, we will be capable of developing acute and elective endovascular services, expanding the scope of diagnostic services, as well as offering more treatment options for cancer patients. The new suite also allows safer patient care through serving as a support to the Cardiac Catheterisation Lab and emergency obstetrics cases. And by taking up some of the procedures previously performed in operating theatres, we will have a greater capacity to cater to more surgical demand.

Apart from the hardware enhancement, we aspire to integrate health innovations into our services such as the development of telemedicine services and introduction of different robotic-assisted surgical systems. Earlier this year, we made another step forward and extended our teleconsultation service to provide remote hypertension care, leveraging the adoption of remote health condition monitoring technology. With this innovative remote hypertension care programme, GHK has recently be awarded the Online Services – Healthcare Award in the Hong Kong Business Technology Excellence Awards 2021. This recognition is a great encouragement to our further exploration of how a similar concept may be applied to the remote management of other chronic diseases. We are on the lookout for more collaboration opportunities on innovative services to make GHK at the forefront of the healthcare industry.

Many of you will be focusing on the Periodic Review by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS) International in the coming month. The Periodic Review will be focusing on a number of areas covering patient identification, medication safety, patient safety culture survey, clinical handover, etc. I thank you all for the efforts made in supporting this exercise of continuous improvement in the quality of care and services and patient safety.

Our recent internal survey on colleagues who have not been vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccine shows that some of our staff are still concerned about the side effects of the vaccination, while some prefer having a health check before making a decision. While appreciating the different concerns, an undeniable fact is that vaccination has been clinically proven to be effective in protecting individuals against the virus or its variants, and should a vaccinated person get infected, his/her risk of having serious symptoms is significantly reduced by the vaccine-elicited antibodies. This has been observed in different parts of the world and has relieved the burden on healthcare systems in different regions.

Going forward, we will implement bi-weekly antigen testing for staff who have not yet been vaccinated or are unable to get vaccinated due to health conditions. Unlike the self-paid testing required for unvaccinated staff in public hospitals and most private hospitals, GHK will bear the cost of the testing. For the sake of yourself and your family, I hope that those of you who are still contemplating the vaccination will get your jabs as early as possible!

Dr Kenneth Tsang
Chief Executive Officer

情繫港怡

GHKConnect