Health regulators need prescription for transparency
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/04/2023 (901 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
In the “about us” section of its website, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba says its role is to “protect the public as consumers of medical care and promote the safe and ethical delivery of quality medical care by physicians in Manitoba.”
If that is indeed true, then the college needs to improve the way in which it warns the public about physicians found guilty of misconduct and, in particular, those who it has decided cannot be trusted to be alone with female patients.
A recent Free Press investigative series found at least five Winnipeg-area doctors have conditions on their medical licenses that limit the treatment they can provide to female patients. However, in some instances, the reasons for the restrictions are not disclosed. In some cases, the details of the restrictions themselves aren’t disclosed.
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Patients, critics question the way Manitoba’s physician watchdog handles cases of misconduct and discipline
And while the public can do a search on a specific physician, it is difficult to find out how many physicians are practising with restrictions and, in many cases, why the restrictions were imposed in the first place.
Although the college is compelled by the Regulated Health Professionals Act to publish details of any discipline taken against a physician, there is no single place Manitobans can go to find out which physicians have been disciplined, for what reasons, and what conditions may have been placed on their licences as they continue to practise medicine.
Finding those details requires multiple searches, across multiple databases, embedded in the college’s website.
Although the legislation does prescribe a certain degree of transparency in matters of discipline, the college’s current online resources seem designed to discourage transparency. That compromises its self-stated mission to protect the public and promote the safe and ethical delivery of medical care.
Confronted with the vagaries of its online resources, the college admits more could be done to improve public access. However, college officials have also implied this would require amendments to the Regulated Health Professionals Act. Experts in medical malpractice have scoffed at that assertion, noting the information is already available in multiple places and forms; all that’s required is a more user-friendly interface so patients could more easily access the information.
The college’s website outlines disciplinary decisions that appear to excuse reprehensible behaviour by physicians.
The state of the college’s database on physicians who have been disciplined, and those who continue to practise medicine with restrictions, also points to a bigger issue related to self-regulation of the medical profession: the apparent deference with which the regulator treats matters of misconduct.
A review of the findings of disciplinary panels repeatedly reveals scenarios in which physicians guilty of some of the most concerning forms of misconduct are nonetheless allowed to continue practising medicine. The Free Press investigative series identified five physicians with gender-based conditions on their medical licences; it also described a Brandon pediatrician who must have another adult in the room when he is performing genital examinations on children.
The college’s website outlines disciplinary decisions that appear to excuse reprehensible behaviour by physicians. The obvious concern is that such decisions are an inevitable consequence of allowing a profession as vital and complex as medicine to regulate itself, resulting in a system that is vulnerable to subjective deference in favour of physicians.
The college should certainly take steps to invest in a more modern, more accessible and more transparent online database which allows Manitobans easy access to the results of disciplinary matters and licensing restrictions. If the college won’t self-start on that project, the provincial government should intervene by introducing legislative amendments that compel those changes.
Either way, Manitobans deserve more from the college than they are currently receiving.
