Page 985 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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operationally this part of the act has been working well. Quality assurance committees play an important and fundamental role in the process of improving health services in the ACT. The protection provisions afforded to approved committees enable full and frank discussion of the issues by the committee, whose objective is to improve the provision of health services in the ACT.
However, improvements to streamline the operational administrative processes and to strengthen the governance of quality assurance committees in performing their functions are advantageous. The amendments seek to provide greater clarification regarding information sharing and to remove the confusion that currently persists surrounding how information is shared in the current act. The ambiguity surrounding how information is to be shared is an issue that often causes anxiety for quality assurance committee members, and providing clarification around this issue will reduce that anxiety, helping them to do their jobs.
Additional reporting provisions have also been included to provide further transparency surrounding quality assurance committees. The aim of these additional reporting requirements is to protect transparency on the work the committees undertake to improve health services in the ACT and to provide more accountability of these committees to the ACT community. Transparency and accountability in the healthcare system are good things.
In order to address the problem of quality assurance committees whose functions have faltered over time, the amendments have included a three-year sunset clause for all quality assurance committees established under the Health Act. The objective of this amendment is to ensure that the functions of the committees are maintained and to enable a mechanism to manage and review the committees’ functions over time. The amendment is primarily administrative and will not affect the day-to-day operations of those committees.
Taken as a whole, the amendments to part 4 of the Health Act strengthen the protection for persons who provide information to quality assurance committees, without preventing the use of this information by relevant authorities and decision makers who have the responsibility to improve and uphold the safe delivery of health services in the ACT.
Consultation regarding these amendments was undertaken with a number of stakeholders, including the Health Care Consumers Association, the Australian Medical Association and chairs of the existing quality assurance committees.
The amendments to part 5 of the bill will formalise the ad hoc administrative arrangements that are currently in place which are required to ensure the safety of the general public following adverse findings of the clinical privileges committee. The amendments also include some new provisions in part 5 that are minor and uncontroversial.
This part of the bill gives the ACT the opportunity to correct the problem with part 5 of the existing legislation, which is that complex administrative arrangements are imposed upon the ordinary functioning of clinical privileges committees and the
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