Why AHPRA must stop naming innocent doctors

More than six hundred doctors and medical professionals have signed a petition calling for the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHRPA) to abandon its practice of naming some practitioners who have experienced disciplinary hearings, even if no adverse findings against the doctor are uncovered.
 
Medical defence organisation Avant has described the move as ‘unfair and punitive, particularly for practitioners with no adverse findings against them’.
 
I wholeheartedly agree.
 
Perception, as we know, is often reality. Mud sticks, particularly in a professional sense, and doctors risk having something vital to their professional lives – their reputation – continually questioned when they have their name included in any suggestion of professional misconduct.
 
For the public interest, doctors have to sacrifice privacy rights when accusations are made. We can understand that. Some doctors can act reprehensibly, illegally and inappropriately, and justice must be served in these rare cases.
 
However, the innocent must also have legal protections, particularly when it comes to doctors and their all-important reputations – as professionals and as people. If an investigation turns up no adverse finding, AHPRA documentation on their record should make that very clear.
 
Being found innocent after legal proceedings should afford the practitioner legal rights, otherwise the law becomes meaningless. If a patient researches a doctor and discovers that an investigation took place, that doctor becomes a target for vexatious complaints, scuttlebutt and rumour.
 
AHPRA has crossed an ‘administrative line in the sand’.
 
The regulator’s role is to protect the public. But protecting the public is not a license to put in place a lifelong public humiliation for innocent parties. 
 
We know disciplinary hearings are not pursued lightly.
 
But we also know some disciplinary hearings involve good doctors who inadvertently get caught up in the wrong situation. Innocent doctors find these times very stressful and they are entitled to closure once the proceedings end, not a permanent slur against their name.
 
In a very real way, AHPRA’s naming of all doctors who have experienced disciplinary hearings is guilt by association.
 
This should stop now.

AHPRA disciplinary hearings Medical defence organisation