Page 1750 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 6 June 2006
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The role of the clinical privileges committee is to provide specialist advice as part of the medical specialist appointment process. The aim of such process is to ensure that healthcare professionals have an acceptable level of knowledge, skills, attitudes and competence consistent with standards established by their registering professional body or equivalent and that they are practising safely.
All processes must be underpinned by the principle of national justice, given the significance of the process to professional practice. This current provision within the legislation applies to public health facilities, not private. The provision within the bill has been moved from section 8 (2) (c) to part 5—clinical privileges—of the Health Act 1993 and discretion is provided to declare private and public sector committees can undertake this valuable role.
The current act protects the identity of consumers but does not contain general confidentiality requirements that prohibit members or other people associated with committees from divulging information gained as a result of the activities of the committee. The bill contains provisions which prevent a person who is, or has been, a member of a committee making a record of, divulging or making use of any information gained while acting on the behalf of the committee, except to perform the functions of the committee.
Qualified privilege is a specific legal doctrine relating to the law of defamation. It essentially means that, if you report a matter to someone to whom you might reasonably report it and you do so without malice, then you have a defence to an action for defamation that might be brought against you because of that report. There are provisions in the current legislation protecting people assisting committees from liability to an action and granting them qualified privilege in proceedings for defamation.
However, it is not clear whether people assisting committees are protected from the requirement to give evidence in ACT courts. The bill provides that members of a committee or persons assisting a committee must not divulge protected information or produce a document containing protected information to a court unless it will facilitate the improvement of health services provided in the ACT.
However, provision has been made to define exceptions to disclosure of the information in relation to the function of investigating a clinician’s clinical performance, the reporting of findings to the chief executive, other relevant quality assurance committees, the coroner and health professional boards and to facilitate the open disclosure standard. These changes are in line with best practice in other Australian jurisdictions. In particular, the ACT coroner has been critical of the existing legislation which he believes hampers his investigations.
Our government has listened to these criticisms and consulted with the medical community about them. The bill moves to open proceedings of quality assurance committees to coronial inquiries where improvement to the ACT health system could result. This will end the tensions between the Health Act and the coronial court.
The provision of qualified privilege in quality assurance legislation is beneficial, for a number of reasons. These include ensuring participation in quality assurance
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