HKU Health System
Clinical Governance

HKU Health System (HKUHS) is the umbrella executive arm overseeing the LKS Faculty of Medicine’s clinical enterprises. The objectives of the HKUHS include:

To ensure robust clinical governance, set uniform standards and exercise effective oversight of the clinical settings we serve to ensure the quality of our clinical service and to protect HKUHS’s reputation.

Purpose

The purpose of this “HKU Health System Clinical Governance Handbook” is to set out uniform guidance and accountability requirements to ensure robust clinical governance that embeds quality and safety in our everyday practice and to facilitate effective oversight of ‘Clinical Service’ Units within the HKU Health System.

“Clinical governance is a system through which organisations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care.”  Put simply, clinical governance is a generic term for everything that helps to maintain and improve high standards of patient care. It covers a whole range of quality and patient safety improvement activities, and provides a framework to draw these activities and tools together in a co-ordinated way.

In developing this handbook, reference was taken from prevailing local and overseas regulatory and professional standards and guidelines where applicable, with a view to setting out the appropriate clinical governance standards for the safe provision of services in our Clinical Service Units. These references included the Department of Health’s Draft Standard for medical Clinics under the Private Healthcare Facilities Ordinance and Code of Practice for Day Procedure Centres.

Applicability of this Handbook

This handbook is applicable to all Clinical Service Units within the LKS Faculty of Medicine that provide direct clinical services to patients, but excludes the Faculty’s Clinical Trials Centre (CTC) which has its own governance arrangements.

All HKUHS Clinical Service Units should observe A. Core Standards as described in Chapters 1-10 of this Handbook.

Units where high risk procedures are to be carried out in an operating room (as defined by Section 2 of the Private healthcare Facilities Ordinance) should also observe B. Specific Standards for Day Procedure Centres of the Handbook.

Director, HKU Health System

December 2021