FEATURE
6 Principles of Right Touch Regulation
1. P
roportionate
Regulators should only intervene when necessary.
Remedies should be appropriate to the risk posed. 4. Transparent
Regulators should be open, and keep regulations
simple and user friendly.
2. Consistent
Rules and standards must be joined up and
implemented fairly. 5. Accountable
Regulators must be able to justify decisions, and be
subject to public scrutiny.
3. Targeted
Regulation should be focused on the problem, and
minimize side effects. 6. Agile
Regulation must look forward and be able to adapt to
anticipate change.
Source: Professional Standards Authority
proponents of the framework sug-
gest it is a very dull instrument for
promoting behaviour change. Right
touch regulation should see regula-
tors only intervene when necessary
and remedies should be appropriate
to the risk posed.
It is an evidence-based frame-
work that has found favour with
this College.
“We need to change our mindset
and work to identify how much
regulatory force is actually needed
to achieve a desired effect,” said Dr.
Nancy Whitmore, College Registrar
and CEO.
“We can’t target everything with
the same amount of energy. The
matters with the greatest urgency in
terms of public safety must be our
biggest priority,” she said.
Originating with the Professional
Standards Authority (PSA) in the
United Kingdom, right touch regu-
lation ensures that the level of regu-
lation is proportionate to the level
of risk to the public. A frequently
used analogy is finding the right
balance on a set of scales. “When
10
DIALOGUE ISSUE 4, 2018
weighing something on balancing
scales, nothing happens until you
reach the desired weight, at which
point the scales tip over,” states a
paper authored by the PSA. “Once
they have tipped any further, weight
added to the other side is ineffectual.
So the right amount of regulation
is exactly that which is needed for
the desired effect,” stated the paper.
Too little is ineffective; too much is a
waste of effort.
It is a concept that underlies our
new approach to investigations,
which is to triage complaints on the
basis of risk of harm to the public
and to consider managing lower
risk complaints through an alterna-
tive dispute resolution process (See
page 12).
The framework recognizes that
there is no such thing as “zero risk”
and that all decisions about what
and how to regulate will involve a
trade-off between different risks and
competing benefits.
Dr. Whitmore says that a key role
for regulators in right touch regula-
tion is to provide clinicians who may