Medical guardian looks again at laymen helping with complaints
Medical Council of Hong Kong members should no longer serve as judges and jury at disciplinary hearings, the council's chairwoman says.
Professor Felice Lieh Mak said such a mixing of roles gives a poor public impression. Instead, setting up a disciplinary panel separate from the main council should be one of the key elements of future reform by the watchdog.
Apart from her fellow committee members, her comment was aimed at the Food and Health Bureau, which is reviewing the structure and membership of various regulatory bodies. The review includes councils for doctors, nurses, dentists, midwives and supplementary health care professionals.
Lieh Mak said the council would work with the bureau on a comprehensive reform package. Increasing the number of lay members and making the disciplinary panel more independent from the council should be a priority, she said.
'Now council members and the chairman are both judge and jury. I won't say there is any conflict of interest but the public perception of the mixing of the two roles is not good,' Lieh Mak said.
At present, the council's preliminary investigation committee screens patients' complaints and decides which cases go to the formal disciplinary process.
A disciplinary panel formed by council members is responsible for hearings. The panellists hear evidence from both sides.
They decide whether the defendant doctor is guilty and also hand down punishment ranging from a reprimand to suspension of licences.
The panel is usually presided by the Medical Council chair, unless she or he is absent.
Lieh Mak said a separate disciplinary panel should be set up and chaired by a retired judge.
It would be good if some council members could still sit on the disciplinary committee because they have a better understanding of the council's policies and could interpret them in the disciplinary procedures, she added.
Permanent Secretary for Food and Health Sandra Lee Suk-yee said the recently launched review would look at the structure, membership and secretariat support for the various regulatory regimes.
'Some of those bodies are given government support in their secretariats - we have to see if they should be made more independent,' she said.
Lee said the bureau would also study if the present legislative supervision of supplementary health-care professionals was adequate.
The Supplementary Medical Professions Council now covers five health-care professional areas including medical laboratory technologists, occupational therapists, optometrists, physiotherapists and radiographers.
A 17-member task force was set up in 2001 to work out a reform package, including a proposal to set up a seven-member disciplinary committee headed by a judge and increasing lay representation. But the package has never been implemented.
Tim Pang Hung-cheong, spokesman for the Patients' Rights Association, said his group has been calling for years for a separation of the council from the disciplinary panel.
'That will make the process fairer. The current system can easily allow biases because members are both judges and jurors,' Pang said.
Former president of the Public Doctors' Association Dr Ho Pak-leung said council members have a 'role conflict'. 'The current structure of the council does not give a sense of fairness to the public, there should be a change,' he said.
In May this year, the council endorsed a watered-down reform for an additional four to six lay people to help handle public complaints - but would not give them formal positions as general members of the watchdog.
The council - which has 28 members of whom four, or 14 per cent, are lay people - found in research earlier this year that this level of lay membership was low compared with several developed countries such as Britain, the United States, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
