Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8099] 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (NZ National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 It is quite disappointing to get only one call on such a comprehensive bill with so many different clauses. It will be really difficult to be able to address in 5 minutes all the issues in Part 4 because it is very comprehensive. Part 4 is all about how the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal works how complaints are made how the new professional conduct committees work and cultural competence and they cannot be given justice in a 5-minute speech. 
I will begin by talking about the situation pre-1996 and post-1996. Pre-1996 any complaints went to the complaints assessment committees via the Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal. Post-1966 the Health and Disability Commissioner Act came in and complaints were referred to the Health and Disability Commissioner. Post-1996 people have had a great deal of confidence in the Health and Disability Commissioner Act. It was brought in under National and it has worked extremely well to resolve disputes involving the public concerning the level of their care. Just about all the complaints we heard in the Parry inquiry centred on how the complaints assessment committees worked. I have also had personal correspondence from people who have written to me and said how upset they were with the complaints assessment committee. 
During the select committee process we were quite keen to change the concept that people still had—that under this bill there would be a complaints assessment committee. So we came up with the new name of “professional conduct committee”. Also I am very pleased that all complaints will now go to the Health and Disability Commissioner to be dealt with in a one-stop shop. That was the whole crux of the Cull report. Helen Cull wanted a one-stop shop which this bill will deliver and it was brought about through the work done in the select committee. However the professional conduct committee will look at things like fraud and sexual abuse—those types of issues that do not concern a profession’s clinical competence. They will go to the Health and Disability Commissioner and then to the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal. 
There has also been concern about this issue. Wendy Brandon who had been chair of the Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal voiced this concern most strongly by saying that people have a right to be judged by their peers. There was a great deal of debate about what the representation on the committee should be—how many lay people and how many professional people there should be. But quite frankly the profession is harder on its people than lay people are. Being judged by one’s peers means that one’s peers know what the level of competence should be. Concern was expressed that either a group of nurses would judge nurses or a group of doctors would judge doctors. But if one looks especially at highly specialised areas of medicine one really does needs one’s peers to be able to judge them. The upshot is that there will be three health professionals one lay person and one lay person who is a legal chair on the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal. That has been a good decision and does allow a person to be judged by a majority of his or her peers. 
I have put in an amendment to clause 116 which is about members of the authority being elected. People have a right to feel that there will be elected members. The Medical Council has already had elected members so I hope that having elected members on the authority will be allowed. The ability for the public to feel confident about the competence of health practitioners is essential. It is essential that people in this country have confidence in health practitioners and that they must feel that if something is going wrong there are competency programmes for each health professional and recertification programmes.