2023-02-22 16:40:14
The government has published its response to its consultation Regulating healthcare professionals (to which PLEA submitted comments).
The full government response can be read here https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/regulating-healthcare-professionals-protecting-the-public?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2023_02_22_CDDaily
Governance and operating framework
In summary, the government intends to give all the healthcare regulators a similar legal framework and the power to make their own rules without needing to go through the Privy Council or to obtain new legislation in order to make changes.
Education and training
In the case of education and training, the reforms will provide all regulators with a full range of powers to set standards in relation to:
- the outcomes of education and training
- specific courses and programmes of training
- education and training providers
The reforms will include a new duty for regulators to establish a periodic process of checking that registrants are continuing to meet the regulator’s standards of practice for their profession.
The reformed legislation will remove much of the prescriptive details setting out overseas registration requirements from the current legislation. This will give regulators the flexibility to set the specific standards for overseas professionals and determine how best to assess applications from these candidates in a proportionate way, in the context of their overarching objective of protecting the public.
Fitness to practise
There will be fitness to practise reforms, aimed at providing greater consistency between regulators’ fitness to practise functions. The proposed changes are intended to deliver a fitness to practise process that is swifter, fairer and less adversarial, which the government says will benefit all parties involved in fitness to practise proceedings and, most importantly, will ensure swift public protection where needed.
The initial assessment stage will enable regulators to determine whether a fitness to practise case should be referred to a case examiner to make a determination. The government considers that this approach will provide regulators with sufficient flexibility to determine which cases should be closed at initial assessment without taking any further action and which cases should be referred to a case examiner. A regulator will be able to appoint one or more case examiners to conclude a case.
The government says the reforms will enable more cases to be resolved without the need for a Fitness to Practise Panel hearing by introducing accepted outcome decisions made by case examiners. The introduction of a case examiner stage for all regulators will result in a less adversarial fitness to practise model by enabling cases to be concluded more quickly. The government says it will also introduce a broad range of measures which will be available to both case examiners and Fitness to Practise Panels to help ensure that restrictions to practise are proportionate and appropriate.
Currently, there are restrictions on investigating fitness to practise proceedings after 5 years have elapsed. The government intends to remove these restrictions and says that it should be for case examiners and Fitness to Practise Panels to determine impairment with the time elapsed between an action giving rise to a concern and its investigation by a regulator being a relevant consideration, not a constraint, on whether regulatory action should be taken against a registrant.
Timing
It is not clear when the reforms will be implemented. The governement is prioritising reforms to medical regulation and it sounds like further change will be carried out step-by-step.