Familiar complaints about the health complaint bodies

Familiar complaints about the health complaint bodies

April 29, 2016

AMA Psychiatry Newsletter April 2016; AMA Qld submission to the Office of the Health Ombudsman

The Office of the Health Ombudsman (OHO) was established by the Queensland Government in 2013 to strengthen the health complaints management system. It replaced the Health Quality and Complaints Commission (HQCC), an organisation that had been criticised for fundamental deficiencies in the way it handled complaints, as well as unjustified delays in dealing with complaints against medical practitioners. Plus ca change plus la meme chose!

 Highlights: 

  1. The absence of medical practitioner leadership and guidance
  2. Suspension of natural justice and procedural fairness in Investigations ; the approach of the OHO is unnecessarily antagonistic
  3. Unreasonably prolonged complaints resolution time (, even where the matter is trivial or vexatious); mandated time frames not followed with no explanation.
  4. Health Ombudsman weakening the national system
  5. The OHO, as it currently operates, creates differing standards and thresholds between itself and the Medical Board of Australia. Thus less consistency of decisions, poor data comparability, reduced confidence of medical practitioners and patients in the decisions of both bodies.

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