If Cautions Issued to Health Professionals Are to Be Published, Safeguards Are Needed
College Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committees (ICRCs) have the power to issue cautions - both verbal and written - to members in circumstances where their conduct is deemed to warrant some type of action short of a referral of allegations of misconduct to the Discipline Committee of the College. Cautions, which are issued based on a documentary review rather than following a hearing, provide the ICRC with a means by which to educate health professionals and to remind them of their obligations and the College's expectations; cautions are not intended to be punitive.
Recently, the media, including particularly the Toronto Star, have called for cautions and even complaints to be published, and a private member's bill in the legislature proposes to do just that: Bill 29, Medicine Amendment Act, 2014 amends the Medicine Act, 1991, to provide that the public register of all members must also include information about complaints, cautions and civil actions or proceedings against a member, as well as information about deaths occurring in patients under the member’s care. The register would also include comparable information from other jurisdictions in which a member practised.
This proposed legislation is concerning, recognizing that ICRCs never hold hearings, that no information collected in the course of the College’s investigation is tested through cross-examination and that professionals may not even receive disclosure of all of the information collected by the College in the course of its investigationIf cautions are to be published in the future, two safeguards will be important, including:
1. ensuring that no cautions issued prior to the enactment of new legislation will be published, since panels may have issued cautions with the understanding that it would not be published; and
2. where a member requests that the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board review a decision by an ICRC to issue a caution, ensuring that no caution is published prior to the determination of such review.
