Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church

Note from a talk given at the church by Beth Wilson, Health Services commissioner on Sunday 23rd November 2008

Our speaker for 23 November 2008 was Dr Beth Wilson, Victoria’s Health Services Commissioner (HSC). Beth spoke on the subject of health rights and the rights of users of health services to make complaints. Beth explained that a complaint has the potential to improve the quality of health services for everyone. “Most people who come to my office are looking for three things. They want to know what went wrong, why it went wrong and they want to make sure what happened to them doesn’t happen to somebody else.”

The HSC can receive complaints about any health service provider in the State of Victoria. The HSC was established by the Health Services (Conciliation and Review) Act 1987 and is really like a health ombudsman. Most of the work of the HSC involves mediation and conciliation. These are processes where the parties are encouraged to resolve the complaints themselves with the assistance of HSC staff.

While the HSC can deal with some serious complaints such as wrong diagnoses, wrong treatment, wrong side procedures and medical negligence, the bulk of the complaints are about communication failures. These may involve rudeness or insensitivity. For example, a woman had had a still born baby in a Victorian hospital and on the day of the baby’s funeral she received an invoice in the mail addressed to “The Foetus Smith.” This complaint did not involve a claim of compensation but it did require a meeting with the hospital, an apology and an assurance that things has been fixed so it would never happen to someone else.

The HSC also administers the Health Records Act 2001 (HRA). This health specific piece of legislation is designed to protect the privacy of Victorian’s health information. The legislation contains 11 privacy principles which tell organisations when they can and cannot collect people’s health information and what they can and cannot do with that information once they have got it. Basically an organisation can collect our health information to do their job and they can use or disclose that information to do their job or for a closely related secondary purpose that the person would reasonably expect. In all other cases, consent must be obtained before people’s health information is used. The HRA, however, can be overridden by other pieces of legislation such as the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 and the Mental Health Act 1986.