COMMENT: What is missing in SGH report
It must be the briefest statement to end a brewing crisis. And it was said with a firm air of finality.
“There is no evidence to suggest that the escalation from the director of medical services to the minister was deliberately delayed,” Leo Yee Sin, chairman of the committee that investigated the Hepatitis C scare at SGH, said last week.
Their report was damning, exposing lapses in protocols at Singapore’s oldest hospital. This pride of Singapore’s health care industry was tardy in recognising the outbreak, its own investigations were messy and there were delays in reporting the matter to the Ministry of Health.
But the team cleared the ministry’s director of medical services, Benjamin Ong, of deliberate delays in reporting the affair to his minister. Chairman Leo shed no light on what questions were put to the director and how they arrived at the verdict.
It took him more than two weeks, from the time he was officially told of the outbreak on Sept 1 by his ministry, to inform the minister. He seemed to have wanted a clearer picture and so asked A*Star to verify the analysis by SGH. That verification came on Sept 7 and the minister was told 11 days later.
Why this delay? What went through his mind? Why didn’t he think the loss of lives, the unusual spread of the illness and the fact that the cases are linked were not serious enough to escalate the matter? What is the standard operating procedure when it comes to escalating the matter to the big boss?
We will never know because the committee did not dwell on these questions at its press conference. Benjamin Ong is no novice to leadership positions. In his 27-year career at the National University Hospital, he has held prime positions such as chief executive of NUHS and chairman of the hospital’s medical board.
With that kind of experience in government-related jobs, Ong should be well-versed with reporting procedures. And the civil service is the most anal about proper information flow between employee and boss and between boss and the big boss. Break that chain, and it can lead to all kinds of problems for the organisation.
This was no ordinary situation. Seven lives had already been lost, SGH had shown extra ordinary lapses in infection control and information flow to the ministry. In fact, the first official word to the Ministry came only three months later.
Ong was not satisfied with the briefing SGH gave him and so asked for an external party to review of the hospital’s findings. He also made the right decision to suspend kidney transplants at the hospital as the outbreak took place in its renal wards.
But why wait to clear all doubts before having an audience with the Minister?
We might never know -- and that is the biggest flaw in what otherwise is a thorough and no-holds-barred report.
P N Balji is a veteran Singaporean journalist who is the former chief editor of TODAY newspaper, and a media consultant. The views expressed are his own.
