Ahpra data strategy will undermine health professionals’ trust in the regulator

Ahpra’s draft digital strategy will not improve patient safety and will continue to undermine health professionals’ trust in the regulator, the AMA said in a submission to Ahpra’s consultation on the strategy.

The AMA has raised serious concerns about the draft strategy including proposals to retain information about historic disciplinary action against practitioners — even when practitioners have taken the necessary remedial action.

The AMA is also concerned about proposals to:

• enable third party reviews, which may allow negative and unverified comments to be made about a practitioner 
• use predictive analytics for regulatory purposes, especially where the source data is unclear and may be inaccurate

AMA President Professor Steve Robson said any strategy to use data more effectively and reduce duplication was welcome if it improved consistency in decision-making and sped up Ahpra’s workflow. However, he said the current plan fails to strike the right balance between disclosure of information for public good and protecting the privacy of registered health practitioners and the integrity of data.

“Continuing to include historic regulatory action on the public register is unnecessarily punitive if practitioners have taken the necessary remedial steps and are practising satisfactorily. They should have the incentive of knowing they won’t be punished in perpetuity,” Professor Robson said.

“Continuing publication of this information will not only further impact doctors’ mental health, but will discourage some practitioners from continuing in practice, in turn punishing the communities they previously served.  

“The potential inclusion of third-party reviews of health practitioners on the public register raises major concerns and is an invitation for inaccurate and vexatious claims — including from other practitioners — to be aired publicly. This can cause irreparable damage to a professional reputation, livelihood and mental health.  

“We know Ahpra is already taking an average of six months to process complaints against medical practitioners, with this time blowing out compared to previous years. If Ahpra has to verify third party reviews this will only add to their workload and further exacerbate this unhappy situation.”

The AMA is also concerned information about practitioners could being shared with other bodies (sometimes required by legislation) and says this should only happen with the knowledge and explicit consent of the practitioner.

“We also think Ahpra is missing an opportunity to show how it can use the data it keeps for better public benefit, like informing workforce demand into the future, for example,” Professor Robson said.

“These issues need to be addressed before we can support implementation of this strategy.”

The AMA believes Ahpra could also work with the Australian Digital Health Agency to use its data to standardise processes for practitioners, such as via a national credentialing portal that streamlines new and recurrent credentialing with health services across Australia.

Read the AMA’s full submission here: https://www.ama.com.au/articles/ama-submission-response-ahpra-draft-data-strategy