The NSW Health Care Complaints Commission – dealing with 5

We’ve just emailed a copy of this post to Ms Sue Dawson, the NSW Health Care Complaints Commissioner.

Typically, the acknowledgement we received back was headed, “Kieran Pehm.”

This, when Kieran Pehm, although formerly the Health Care Complaints Commissioner, hasn’t been the Commissioner, now, for over 4 years ago – as is indicated by this.

Everything about the HCCC is so slack!

We’ve done this exercise SO often over the years – gone through the Media Releases on the Commission’s website, and found that, although, on it’s own figures, the Commission receives more than 100 complaints a month about doctors, there are seldom more than 1 or 2 instances where doctors have been found to have to have not done a very good job – and often there are none, even when there are Media Releases, and often there are no Media Releases in particular months either.

We’ve just done a quick check on their Media Releases for the last 30 days, up until today, and there are 9 – more than usual – but only 1 is about a doctor, and the release on him concerns sexual misconduct. One could get the impression from the NSW HCCC that there is no reason to complain about 99.99% of the doctors in NSW, which, of course, in the real world, is not the case. Not that we’re wanting to say this is uniquely so about doctors – its just as much so about dozens of other professional people, trades people and others around us.

We’re always saying that, in every situation, there are two things which are entirely separate – (1) how things are, and, (2)  what, if anything is to be done about how things are.

In lots of situations, these days, the internet makes it kindergarten stuff to find out how things are – it’s kindergarten stuff, for instance, to find out how things are with the NSW HCCC, aspects of which are often quite bizarre. But, particularly under the Berejiklian government, is anything ever going to be done about them? We’ve never come across anything that indicates other than that it’s incredibly unlikely.

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