Ombudsman finds systemic flaws in Medical Council's complaint handling

The Office of The Ombudsman took the initiative to investigate the work of the Medical Council of Hong Kong's secretariat.

It found that some complaints were still in the preliminary investigation stage 7 years after receiving the case.

A medical complaint -- 15 years in the waiting.

The case involved a disciplinary inquiry into a doctor after a couple filed a complaint to the Medical Council in 2010, that their newborn son developed cerebral palsy because a Baptist Hospital paediatrician acted too slowly on nurses' warnings.

Currently, the Medical Council's complaint mechanism comes in four tiers. It must first go through the preliminary inquiry committee, then to the disciplinary inquiry for deliberation with a possibility for appeals.

In the past five years, a total of 263 cases were handled by the inquiries. More than 70 percent of them were completed within five years.

But 11 cases remained in the backlog -- and took 10 to 15 years to complete.

The median processing time for the initial consideration stage by the Investigation Committee is 10.4 months.

The investigation committee deliberation stage takes 14 months, and the inquiry stage takes 11 months. In some cases, the preliminary consideration stage took 8 years.

As of the end of last year, the Medical Council had a backlog of 895 complaint cases.

Seven years after the receipt of the complaint, some are still in the preliminary consideration stage.

Jack Chan, the Ombudsman says the Council's current complaint handling monitoring mechanism shows multiple systemic deficiencies in its management and operation.

Even though the Medical Council amended the relevant regulations with reforms in 2018, the Ombudsman finds that the handling progress remains too slow.

It puts forward 21 recommendations urging the Medical Council to streamline the procedures.

They include improving legislation and strengthening the mechanism for the Medical Council to review cases, as well as stepping up supervision of the staff performance of

the Council's Secretariat.

For medical dispute cases that do not involve the ethics of medical staff, mediation methods will be introduced.