Meeting Purpose

This topic was part of a BC-PAN meeting held on January 29th, 2020. The purpose of this part of the meeting was to seek input from public advisors to help inform regulatory changes in British Columbia.

Key messages from public advisors

The public usually only needs to know about health care regulators when they have a specific need, such as when they want to find a health care provider or if they have had a bad experience with a health care provider.

Regulatory Changes in BC

Shenda introduced Dianne Millette, CPTBC registrar, to speak about modernization of health professions regulation.

• The Ministry of Health commissioned a review of the College of Dental Surgeons of BC and the Health Professions Act by Harry Cayton and the release of his report led to the formation of an all-party steering committee led by Minister of Health Adrian Dix
• The steering committee released a paper for consultation and received over 3000 responses
• Report highlights:
  • Governance: Boards would consist of eight to 12 people, half would be public member, all would be appointed by an independent oversight body though a competency-based process
  • Reduction in number of colleges: The 20 current colleges would be reduced to five
  • Oversight body: Functions would include investigating the performance of colleges, creating template standards, approving bylaws and operating a single registry of all health-care practitioners (HCPs)
  • Complaints: Would be conducted by colleges in a more streamlined process, colleges would be allowed to make limited public comments about ongoing investigations, prior complaints history could be considered by inquiry committees
  • Discipline: Would be conducted by independent discipline panels managed by the oversight body
• Colleges are awaiting news from the steering committee about the future of health regulation in BC, this news may affect the future of the BC-PAN as well

Advisor comments and questions

• Is there a similar framework in other provinces?
• Great that complaints would be more public
• Will paramedics and other paramedicine health-care practitioners become regulated?
• How many of the responses to the steering committee were from the public and how many were from regulators themselves?
• Great that public members of board and committee would be appointed based on competencies as there is a concern now that the public members don’t truly represent the public
• Are the final recommendations from the steering committee binding?
• Will changes to the Health Professions Act need to be approved by the legislative assembly?
• Would the reports from the oversight body be available to the public?

Advisor input: What is relevant about health regulation that the public needs to know?

Shenda explained that at the first BC-PAN meeting, there was discussion on ways colleges could effectively connect with members of the public which lead the regulators to ask: What is relevant about health regulation that the average member of the public needs to know? This will help the colleges understand where to spend their communications energy and money, rather than assuming what the public needs and wants to know.

Do you think the average member of the public needs to know that the colleges exist?

• The public only needs to know about colleges when they have a need, usually when they need to find an HCP or have had a bad experience with an HCP
• There needs to be awareness that colleges are here for the public
• “I didn’t know about the colleges before I came to these meetings”
• Some people may know they can bring their concerns to colleges but there are other barriers like they don’t believe they will be listened to
• Many patients bring concerns about their care to the health authority but there are many HCPs that don’t work in health authority-affiliated facilities so the public needs to know that the college is available to address these concerns
• Public awareness campaigns may be especially important for some of the smaller colleges

What elements of regulation do you think the public need to be aware of?

• What regulators can do for you and what they can’t
• Where to go for things regulators can’t deal with
• Information on the subsets of the specific health profession and what services you can expect through each subset
• How to make a complaint
• If there are other ways to resolve my issue other than making a complaint
• That I will be heard if I do make a complaint

Should effort be put into informing the public about the directory of registrants?

• It’s valuable if the level of transparency meets the needs and expectations of the public
• Googling an HCP doesn’t provide all of the information that is available in the college directory, but it may not be practical to expect the public to use the directory because they may not know it’s there or how to use it
• Want to find the college directory easily when I Google the name of an HCP
• RateMDs sometimes comes up first when you Google an HCP but it’s based on feelings, not facts
• Colleges should consider putting money towards search engine optimization

Should effort be put into informing the public about regulatory activities like registration or quality assurance?

• The public doesn’t need to know what colleges are doing behind the scenes on a daily basis
• Assumption that HCP is required to take part in professional development, but there is skepticism that HCPs are actually doing it
• The college can let the public know in a general sense that HCPs are required to take part in quality assurance activities, but they don’t need a deep dive into details

Other comments

• Language needs to be easily understandable and concise
• Information should be presented in segments so people can get just the high-level information (e.g. FAQs) or can go deeper if they want to
• Signs in health-care facilities may be helpful in informing the public about the colleges
• Some HCPs do patient satisfaction surveys and the HCP will follow up if the patient provides negative feedback
  • This allows for mediation and takes some load off colleges
  • But there’s no oversight of these surveys
• A patient advocate or navigator that could assist with all colleges and HCPs would be helpful and would eliminate the need for individual colleges to communicate about who they are and what they do