Heatley Phil: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8094] 
PHIL HEATLEY (NZ National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I would like to start by thanking the Minister for taking the time to rise to her feet and put forward her views on the quality assurance issue. However she may not have picked up on the concern felt by members on this side—and the Supplementary Order Papers put forward by Lynda Scott MP for Kaikoura because of her concern and the concern within the health sector—about this Minister’s ability to sign off these quality assurance programmes and whether indeed someone else might be in a better position to do that now and into the future. I would like to let the Minister know that major inquiries into health errors locally and internationally and she should know this have stressed the importance of a no-blame environment. This is to encourage learning from adverse events which all of us would prefer do not happen but they do so health professionals should learn from them. That is what we all want. We want health professionals to learn from those events. 
At the moment the Minister of Health is able to declare an activity as a protected quality assurance activity and that protects any person participating in the activity from civil liberty. That is clear. However this bill proposes a different definition and I want to emphasise that point. It proposes a different definition of quality assurance activity that focuses more on the competence of the individual practitioner and less on the evaluation and assessment of health services provided by that very practitioner. In fact not only does it focus more on a specific practitioner but also on a series of practitioners who may have been involved in an adverse health event. It does not focus on the evaluation and assessment of the health services provided by various practitioners up to and resulting from that event. 
That is the point we would like to make clear and that is why Lynda Scott MP for Kaikoura and Opposition spokesperson on health has been concerned enough to draft up amendments to this bill in this area. Originally a quality assurance exercise that had the potential to enhance patient safety would either have had to proceed without protection or would have had to wait until one or more of these inquiries had concluded. Sometimes this takes years and the Minister is well aware of that. We can list lots of examples where that has happened. I am sure if we get opportunities we will list how many times it has happened. 
The Minister herself has introduced Supplementary Order Paper 118 to amend this particular part which demonstrates to members on this side that the original bill was rushed through the whole parliamentary process and that consultation did not occur as it should. Quite significant changes were made and are still being made. Consultation certainly should occur in this area of the bill if not in any other. That is quality assurance. That is focusing on mistakes made and learning from them into the future. 
In addition the revised bill requires that any protected quality assurance activity be carried out under the auspices of a ministerial appointee. This is not required under the present legislation but the Minister would have us believe that it is. It is not required under this legislation. 
Hon Annette King 
: I didn’t say that. 
PHIL HEATLEY 
: The Minister got to her feet and shouted and carried on and waved bits of paper which were blowing over here making out that these processes actually occur at the present time. They do not. I would also like to bring to the attention of the Minister that many submitters—and she was not sitting round the select committee table and I do not know if her ears were open to those concerns in the health sector—felt that clauses 51 to 60 were impenetrable and their concerns had not been adequately addressed. I put that to the Minister.