legislation
Bill 21 proposes to improve
sharing of information
B
ill 21 – the Safeguarding Health Care Integrity
Act, 2014 – reflects some of the legislative
requests that the College has asked for in
order to better ensure patient safety.
As long as four years ago, the College requested the
following changes:
• Enabling health regulatory colleges to more readily
share information with public health authorities when
health protection concerns have been identified;
• Permitting colleges to share information with hospi
tals related to investigations;
• Enhancing mandatory reports to health colleges to
better protect patients by closing some existing gaps;
• Permitting flexibility to focus college investigations of
complaints (a limited discretion)
Bill 21, which just passed third reading, proposes improving information sharing between health regulatory
colleges and public health authorities as well as hospitals. The College has long advocated for this change, as
it will improve patient safety and increase transparency.
Once the provisions are proclaimed, Colleges will have
the clear authority to disclose a breach of infection
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Dialogue Issue 4, 2014
control practices to public health and allow us to better
protect the public.
Following the development and enactment of a regulation that defines “prescribed purpose”, the College will
be able to share investigation-related information with
hospitals. The College’s ability to share information will
be subject to any limitations provided for in the regulation. The development of this regulation is expected to
take a significant amount of time.
Bill 21 also strengthens the mandatory reporting
duty for hospitals to report physician incompetence or
incapacity. These changes clarify that a hospital or employer has a mandatory reporting duty where a member
restricts his or her practice and the administrator has
reasonable grounds to believe the restriction is related to
the competence/conduct of the physician. Bill 21 also
removes the requirement for the resignation or restriction to occur during an investigation for a mandatory
reporting duty to be triggered.
The sections in Bill 21 that were designed to provide
health Colleges with greater discretion to not investigate
complaints, thereby allowing Colleges to focus resources
on more serious complaints, were removed from the legislation in Committee. We are hopeful that improved
provisions will be introduced in the near future.
photo: istockphoto.com
Colleges would be permitted to share information with hospitals related to investigations