Hong Kong hospital reviews supervision measures for patient who fell to his death after leaving recovery centre
- Kwai Chung Hospital creates review panel to look into disappearance of 20-year-old patient from site’s recovery centre, shortly before his fatal fall on October 13
- Patient’s mother accuses recovery centre of negligence and tells local media she warned staff her son had history of psychosis and suicide attempts
A Hong Kong hospital has established a review panel to look into the supervision arrangements for a 20-year-old man who left the site’s recovery centre last month and fell to his death soon after.
Kwai Chung Hospital announced the review on Monday as local media reported the patient’s mother had expressed dissatisfaction over the 45-minute window from when staff flagged him as missing on the afternoon of October 13 to police’s discovery of his body close to a building in the same district.
Discussing the tragedy, a hospital spokesman said: “The hospital has reported the incident to headquarters and set up a root cause analysis panel to examine the incident in detail, including the arrangements for the patient’s treatment at the day recovery centre.”
The hospital said the patient had completed the centre’s registration process at around 10.15am on the day of the incident, describing the man’s initial response as passive before he later expressed a wish to leave.
The centre primarily works with adult patients who have received follow-up appointments from the West Kowloon Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic.
Staff at the time reminded the man not to leave without permission and notified his family about his request, it added.
