July-01-2015 in Healthcare Law
The office of ombudsman Peter Tyndall recently applied to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for an extension of its jurisdiction to encompass matters concerning clinical judgment.
Mr Tyndall is concerned that a lacuna has emerged in the health system following the recent Corbally Supreme Court judgment, which raised the bar very high for regulatory bodies to hold Fitness to Practise Inquiries. He believes many complaints have “nowhere to go” because they do not satisfy the new thresholds on Fitness to Practise as well as falling outside his current remit.
It is proposed that the Ombudsman should investigate complaints concerning clinical judgment and that if an investigation raised a question over a clinician’s fitness to practise, it would be referred to the regulatory body. Extending his remit in this way would not usurp the function of regulatory bodies. It would create a forum for the consideration of many complaints which are currently going un-investigated and would bring his powers in line with his counterparts in the United Kingdom.
Mr Tyndall commenced this dialogue about potentially changing the law when he saw the low number of health complaints received by his office last year. He also pointed to the fact that in 2013, only one doctor was referred by the HSE to the Medical Council as evidence that the current system is not working. He wishes to differentiate the professional regulatory system from the handling of complaints. His office recently published “Learning to Get Better”, an investigation by the Ombudsman into how public hospitals handle complaints.
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