Hutchison Paul: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Hutchison Paul: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8169] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (NZ National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this most important Part 8. Like my colleague Dr Lynda Scott I would like to congratulate the commissioner on the very strong and excellent submission he made to the Health Committee. I believe it was very much that shaping and influence that led National to support this part of the bill. 
It is also really important to go through just a bit of the history that led up to the Cull report because it is a sad indictment on the New Zealand health scene over the last 20 years. It was not just the Cartwright inquiry report in respect of National Women’s Hospital; history then repeated itself with the sad saga at Gisborne and once again and more recently we had the Parry incident up in Northland. Helen Cull QC collated the various concerns into a report that had a huge impact and it really shaped the basis of this Part 8. 
Helen Cull concluded that the current complaints system was inadequate. Its principal problem was that there was no concerted approach to complaint mechanisms with up to 14 agencies separately investigating the same adverse medical event. It is absolutely incredible that the New Zealand health system had got itself into such an unfortunate situation. There was the Accident Compensation Corporation on the one hand the district health boards on the other and the various medical bodies were not talking to each other and not collating the same statistics. Certainly when the Health Committee went through the Parry report a year or so ago it was quite evident that that was a major problem so it is extremely good to see the Cull report being embodied in legislation over these next few weeks. 
The report recommended three immediate solutions. The first is a requirement that various agencies be required to report practitioners whose practices are below acceptable standards to the Health and Disability Commissioner and to professional bodies. Undoubtedly that was long overdue and appropriate. 
The next solution is mandatory reporting by professional peers if there is reason to believe that a colleague is practising below an acceptable standard. With a true Pavlovian dog reflex the Minister of Health immediately said: “Let’s dob in a doctor!”. That was the cry of the Minister of Health. That was what she wanted to do immediately. Fortunately common sense has prevailed because she finally recognised—with a lot of aid—that no workplace would work constructively if that sort of atmosphere were to prevail. 
The third solution is to give professional authorities the power to suspend practitioners temporarily if they pose a risk to public safety or to impose conditions on their practices prior to the laying of charges before a disciplinary tribunal. 
I have just been looking through the submissions of the various major bodies including the New Zealand nurses’ organisation and it is interesting that all of them support the changes that have been made. But Dr Lynda Scott’s point that clause 231 should be changed has also been unanimously supported by both the New Zealand Medical Association—the association of fulltime specialist practitioners—and the Medical Council of New Zealand as well as the nurses’ organisation. They have all pointed out that clause 231 needs changing and I hope the Minister will take note of it.