Watchdog wants all medical mishap facts

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

The Medical Council is pushing to be told of all cases of medical misadventure discovered through accident investigations.

In a deal signed last month, the Accident Compensation Corporation agreed to inform the council of all findings against doctors of medical "error" - the more serious category of misadventure, which can involve negligence.

But it has stopped passing on findings of medical "mishap" - defined as rare and severe complications of a treatment properly given.

Under the deal, which broadly reflects last year's rewriting of ACC's governing legislation, the corporation will alert the council if a doctor is the subject of five mishap findings in five years, or more than one in a year.

Council chief executive Sue Ineson said in a submission on the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill, now before Parliament's health committee, that the council would ask for ACC to be required to report all medical misadventure.

This requirement had been removed from an earlier draft of the bill, she said. Without the medical misadventure information, the council might be deprived of facts that could, if added to rulings about the same doctor from other health authorities, trigger a competence review.

The council would apply different thresholds to different branches of medicine in deciding whether to start a competence review of a doctor who was the subject of a number of mishap findings.

The number of mishaps would be set higher for those working in areas where medical or surgical complications were more likely, such as obstetrics and gynaecology, Mrs Ineson said.

But Medical Association chairman Dr John Adams said his group objected to any use of ACC mishap findings for disciplinary action or competence reviews.

"There should not be any information on mishap being passed ... [since] the definition of mishap in the legislation is 'treatment properly given'."

Complications sometimes occurred in medicine and the doctors in mishap cases were explicitly not at fault.