Masterclass 16 - Healthcare Providers and Project Stakeholders Roundtable

To cope with ever raising healthcare service need and aging public hospitals in Hong Kong, Hospital Authority (HA) Hong Kong intended to have large scale new hospitals or hospital redevelopment projects. It was planned to have 1st and 2nd Hospital Development Project in HA with government funding support of HK$200 billion and HK$270 billion respectively, from 2014 to 2036. 
Two critical limiting factors in planning major capital projects are budget and time, whereas stakeholder engagement is crucial to the success of hospital redevelopment project. It is important to well definite the planning process with proper governance structure and timely engagement of end users, hospital management, HA head office, Health and Development Bureau of Hong Kong Government, project consultants and contractors. Related District Council and patient groups are should also inform and involve at different stages to get community support. Abortive works should be avoided to minimize jeopardize on the cost as well as progress of project. Finally, coordination and communication of multiple parties is the main duties of Planning & Commission (P&C) team of each hospital project. 

One of the Government's policy initiatives to enhance Primary Care is to coordinate various service providers of primary care services under the concept of Community Health Centre (CHC). Indeed, CHC can help to enhance the role of gate-keeping in primary care in order to "Help People Stay Healthy", which is one of the visions of Hospital Authority. 


North District Community Health Centre (NDCHC), being the 4th and largest CHC territory-wide, will provide three main functions: medical consultation, health risk assessment & chronic disease management, as well as patient empowerment services. It will incorporate three major features in achieving "Helping People Stay Healthy" for the community: One-Stop, Multidisciplinary Approach related with Telehealth Clinic (One SMArT Clinic), with the support of 5G and advanced technology. The CHC will also serve as a new platform for medical social collaboration in empowering and supporting the community. 


Being located at the centre of North District, NDCHC can be easily accessible by the public and be our patient's first point of Contact. Comprehensive and Coordinated services from Department of Health, Hospital Authority & Social Welfare Department, from newborns to elderly, from prevention to treatment, are housed within NDCHC, including Maternal and Childhealth Centre, Elderly Health Services, Family Medicine Centre, Integrated Allied Health Centre, Community Outreach & Psychiatric Service Teams. With the development of telemedicine, Continuity of Care can be carried out for those who live far away in the district.


NDCHC is one of the first 10-year hospital development projects. From planning to service commencement, it has taken more than 15 years and five major steps are essential to ensure the success in its establishment: capital planning, project governance, stakeholder engagement, commissioning and public communications.

Hospital Building Services Engineering Systems play a pivotal role in assuring resilience of hospital operation. These complicated and inter-dependent engineering systems comprising: electrical, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, fire services, medical gas, plumbing and drainage system are supporting the very essential functions of the hospitals in the delivery of patient-care services. These systems are constantly under unpredictable challenges and disturbances, periods of overcrowding and medical response to accidents and disasters including increment weather and epidemic.


Engineering Systems Resilience makes a largely hidden contribution to ongoing hospital operation and indeed patient safety, it is not simply a success towards the threat of failure, but also on the anticipated failure, reduce failure in process, or redirect the failure pathway to easier recovery, with less disruptive or less costly and more importantly to sustain safe patient services delivery.


While hospital is an infrastructure-dependent, dynamic and operation-driven system, its resilience depends not only on built or physical infrastructure, but also on the design and functioning of non-structural, regulatory components, such as compliance of local statutory and international reference standards, risk assessment, incidents review and associated operation management. This presentation will outline how HA operates to tackle engineering resilience matters, with also the use of innovative technologies and established organizational regime from building up capacities in the perspectives of preventive, absorptive, adaptive, transformative and acquisitive cogitations, and in how resilience is cascaded through to the various building services engineering systems.