B.C.’s health minister has introduced long-awaited legislation that will overhaul the province’s system for regulating everyone from doctors to dental hygienists, promising greater accountability for health professionals and better transparency for the public.
Adrian Dix introduced the Health Professions and Occupations Act on Wednesday afternoon, saying it will replace the Health Professions Act. Expected results will include routine audits of all health colleges, funding for victims of sexual misconduct and the publication of all disciplinary measures, according to the province.
“Our government is making the most significant changes to the oversight of regulated health professions in British Columbia’s history,” Dix said in a press release.
“These changes will streamline the process for regulating new health professions, provide stronger oversight, provide more consistent discipline across all professions, acting in the public interest and protecting patient care in the province while laying the foundation to further reduce the total number of regulations. colleges.”
Follow the new legislation a 2019 report by an international expert who charged that BC’s health professional colleges had demonstrated “a relentless lack of focus on patient safety” and recommended that the current system be scrapped and replaced entirely.
The proposed new law would create a new oversight body and an independent disciplinary tribunal for professionals accused of crimes.
The province says it will also streamline the process of reducing the number of vocational colleges to six, down from the original 24. A series of mergers over the past few years have reduced the current number to 15.
Dix said the province will now prioritize the regulation of counselors and psychotherapists, something many members of those professions have called for over the past three decades. After that, the priority will be the diagnostic and therapeutic professionals.
New measures against discrimination, funding for victims
A new oversight body will conduct routine audits of colleges and have the power to investigate them if necessary, according to a report from the province. This body will also set standards for policy and practice.
The legislation will also create a separate disciplinary process for professionals, which the watchdog will support.
Unlike now, all disciplinary agreements relating to healthcare professionals will be made public. Currently, only those considered “serious matters” are published.
Colleges will have to fund counseling for victims of sexual abuse and misconduct, and victims will be able to cover the costs of professionals who have harmed them.
College board members will no longer be elected, but will be appointed through what the ministry describes as a “competence-based process” to ensure they prioritize public safety over the interests of the professionals who voted for them .
Dix said the legislation also addresses the findings of the “In Sight” report on anti-Indigenous racism within BC’s health care system. Discrimination will be considered a form of professional misconduct and all colleges must implement anti-discrimination measures.
Lack of “clear accountability to the public” in the system
The health ministry’s press release on the act says it was written “partly in response” to a report by British regulatory expert Harry Cayton, who was brought in to look into the dysfunction at the College of Dental Surgeons of BC.
When he looked beyond the dental college systemwide, Cayton wrote that he discovered “a relentless lack of focus on patient safety in many but not all of today’s colleges. Their governance is insufficiently independent , lack of a competency framework. a way to manage the mix of skills or a clear accountability to the public they serve.”
International regulation expert Harry Cayton, right, presented his report on the regulation of health professionals in BC in April 2019. (Mike McArthur/CBC)
His concerns were not new.
BC’s ombudsman expressed some dismay at the state of regulation 19 years ago, writing that “the professions do not seem to have fully accepted or understood what it means to act in the public interest.”
Cayton’s report pointed to a number of troubling examples in recent history, including the case of Anke Zimmermann, the former Victorian naturopath who gained worldwide attention after treating a young child with a homeopathic remedy derived from from the saliva of a rabid dog.
Cayton said the story demonstrates “an example of the weakness in public protection of fragmented self-regulation.”
It was the BC Naturopathic Association that stepped in and filed a complaint against Zimmermann. Cayton writes that this turn of events made it appear that the university, which has a legal mandate to protect the public, was less committed to that mission than a professional association, whose mandate is to act on behalf of its members.
The report also criticized the “secrecy” built into the complaints system in BC
“Only a small number of complaint results are published,” Cayton wrote.
“It must be recognized as a fundamental right of the patient to know the competence and conduct of his health care provider.”
Cayton’s report led to the formation of a cross-party committee consisting of Dix and then health critics Norm Letnick of the Liberals and Sonia Furstenau of the Green Party, which developed the framework for the legislation introduced Wednesday.