Page 2367 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 16 September 1992
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In an age of increasingly corporate health care, this is not enough. Our proposal is for a separate unit with its own legislation and staffing to take complaints about any health care service or provider; to provide a safe, confidential process of conciliating those complaints; to be able to investigate quickly the more serious complaints or complaints that cannot be conciliated; to refer complaints to relevant bodies such as registration boards; to make reports to me, the Assembly, registration boards and other bodies; to investigate wider problems in the health system, such as access to services, trends in complaints, and so on; and to educate consumers and providers to promote and respect their health rights and responsibilities.
In the longer term, the range of complaints handled by the ACT independent health complaints unit will be reviewed periodically. Initially, it is proposed that priority should be given to handling complaints against institutional or corporate health care providers such as hospitals or nursing homes; complaints against registered health practitioners and professionals, irrespective of whether they are employed in the public or private sector; complaints against members of non-registered professions such as homoeopaths or acupuncturists; and complaints against those providing or purporting to provide health services, such as alternative providers, including natural therapists and acupuncturists.
Complaints can be about treatment - inadequate or wrong diagnosis or treatment; communication - failure to consult, poor attitude or discourtesy, which are shopfront issues; costs - level, disclosure or appropriateness of charges; access - things such as delay in treatment, discharge or transfer or being refused admission; rights - access to records, insufficient consent, privacy and discrimination; and administration, which might involve public health standards, administration and quackery in relation to unregistered people and illegality.
A complaint against a perceived refusal to treat, for example, would first be referred by the complaints unit back to the provider for their comments. The relevant registration board might also be notified. If it was felt that the complaint was best handled by a board, the complaints unit would hand over the complaint and await a report from the board. Alternatively, the complaints unit could continue to handle the complaint. Depending on the provider's response, the unit might then simply pass on the response to the consumer. Since many complainants only want further explanation, such a response is often enough to resolve a complaint. If the consumer is not satisfied, the unit could seek to informally resolve the complaint or proceed to full conciliation. In conciliation, protected by privilege, the consumer and the provider could come to an agreement about the complaint. That may involve money or an apology. If conciliation failed or, more likely, if the complaint were deemed unsuitable for conciliation, the unit would be able to use its investigation powers to review all aspects of the complaint and make a report to any appropriate authority.
The unit will not be charging around attacking doctors. It is not intended to be an adversarial body. The consultation process might be, but the Government would resist that. In my view, it has a role to educate many of us who assume that medicine can cure all instantly and that, if it does not, it is someone's fault. As I have said before, mistakes do happen, and we need to realise that. But some mistakes happen for particular reasons, and the unit can identify these reasons. This unit is long overdue. Most other States have or will establish similar units, and we need to do so as well - not simply to copy them, but because we all face similar problems.
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