Roy Heather: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Roy Heather: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8136] 
HEATHER ROY (ACT NZ) 
: 
 As we have just heard Part 4 deals with complaints and discipline. I think it is very important to have some background information and some of the other speakers have touched on this. The complaints process to date has been far from adequate. In fact in some cases it has been quite shocking. Patients who have very valid complaints have waited months and in some cases even years to have their complaints heard and that has been unsatisfactory for everyone. Not only does the person making the complaint have to suffer and wait for long periods of time but also the health professional at the other end of the complaint has a long wait. 
Of course there are always a number of vexatious complaints and these are never easy. People who think they have been wronged are looking for somebody to take the blame. The health practitioner at the other end of it also often has to wait months and sometimes years to have a case heard—even when it is a very simple matter—so that it can be dismissed. 
I think it is fair to say that the Health Committee had a lot of discussion about this part. We received several very good submissions. In particular I would like to refer to the submissions from the Health and Disability Commissioner and from Wendy Brandon of the Law Society and also to the submissions from the professions themselves. I think that at the end of that process this part of the bill was the part that probably the whole committee was reasonably content with. We heard from the previous speaker that the Minister of Health still has great powers but the provisions we now see in this bill are much better than what we have had previously. Complaints will now all go through the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner and it will be more like a one-stop shop than what we have had previously. 
Doctors are the ones about whom the most complaints are received. The complaints mostly go to the Health and Disability Commissioner but any complaint dating back before 1996 goes to the professional bodies to be referred on to complaints investigation committees. Those committees will now be replaced by professional conduct committees. The select committee had a lot of discussion about the make-up of these committees and came to what I regard as a very satisfactory decision. When a complaint is made against a health professional a majority of that person’s peers will be on the conduct committee. Certainly Wendy Brandon from the Law Society was adamant that that should happen and the professions were adamant that that should happen. Some of the lobby groups were a little disappointed but I think that in the final instance they will be reasonably satisfied with that result once they see how it works. 
There was a lot of discussion about compliance costs particularly for the smaller professions—the people who do not earn a lot. I think those concerns were listened to and addressed well by the officials. I felt they did a particularly good job in that regard and I think the outcome will be very good. The compliance costs have been partly allayed by the fact that the secretariat from each of the professions individually will run the complaints system. It will do the administration for each one and that should see a drop in compliance costs. 
We do have to take complaints and discipline very seriously. The professions do need to be transparent. As we know this bill is about competence despite my concerns that competence was not able to be defined in the bill because everybody felt it was too hard. I think that a level of competence is very important and I think we should have tried harder to define competence but the professions will manage to do it for themselves. I am pleased that professional self-regulation will be there even if it is not the intention of the Government. 
The new one-stop shop will I believe be much better for the complaints system than the one we presently have. The time that people have to wait to have their complaints heard should be significantly less. Despite the fact that the work of the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner will increase the commissioner seems to think he will be able to cope. I am sure there will be a good outcome for everybody. I think the amount of pressure that somebody is under when a complaints process is in train is often underestimated. The waiting is the hard part.