Regulation of Health Practitioners (LAWS70401)

Over the past few years there have been profound changes in the regulation and registration of the health professions. Fifteen professions are now included in a national scheme and others may join them. All of the registered professions are covered by the same legislation for accreditation, registration and the monitoring of practice, to ensure that standards are maintained to protect the public. More than 700,000 health practitioners are registered under the national scheme and, when it was adopted in July 2010, 66 acts of parliament were repealed and about 85 health professional boards were abolished. This subject will provide a detailed examination of the scheme, which has centralised the disciplinary process, with the state and territory registration bodies acting under delegated authority from the federal board. The subject will also provide an understanding of how health practitioners, their employers and educators can report ‘notifiable conduct’ of practitioners to the national regulator, and how healthcare consumers (patients) can lodge a ‘notification’ about the practice of a health practitioner. The course will scrutinise the concept of revalidation, and the health, fitness/character, performance and conduct pathways, analysing the factors that lead to different forms of disciplinary findings and determinations for different forms of problematic conduct, including sexual misconduct and serious error. It will examine what differentiates permissible from impermissible advertising, will evaluate how unregistered practitioners are now regulated and will explore how registered, unregistered and deregistered practitioners’ conduct is regulated by consumer protection legislation.

Principal topics include:

• Legal requirements for accreditation, registration and monitoring of practice of health practitioners in Australia
• The process and grounds for disciplinary action
• An examination of specific disciplinary proceedings against health practitioners, looking at issues of conduct, health, performance and fitness
• A comparison of disciplinary proceedings and other legal action against health practitioners
• Analysis of the regulatory mechanisms applicable to unregistered practitioners
• An evaluation of the new registration scheme and its operation to date
• A review of consumer protection actions that can be taken against health practitioners, both those who are registered and those who are not.