Greenbank Pioneer Health: AHPRA case devastates popular clinic
The lawyer for a Logan husband-and-wife GP duo say their business has collapsed since AHPRA brought 14 charges against them, 13 of which were dismissed.
Logan
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The husband-and-wife duo behind a popular Logan medical centre servicing an “under-resourced community” have been dealt a frightful blow by health regulator AHPRA after being found guilty of one count of recklessly passing off a clinical observer as a registered GP.
Chhaya Medical Services Pty Ltd, trading as Greenbank Pioneer Health, was fined $6000 in Beenleigh Magistrates Court on Wednesday after being sentenced for the single count of contravening s116(2)(c) of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law.
The court heard the outcome reverberated far beyond the fine for husband-and-wife GPs Dr Rajeev and Bhavana Chhaya, who founded Greenbank Pioneer Health in 2013.
Defence lawyer Andrew Anderson told the court AHPRAs commencement of legal action and stringent conditions imposed on the practice since February 2019 has resulted in the marked reduction of its ability to see patients.
“It’s reduced its footprint from 12,000 patients to about 4000,” Mr Anderson told the court.
“They don’t have the staff there anymore due to practising constraints and profit and revenue have both substantially fallen.
“There’s also been an increase in insurance premiums.”
Despite this grievous blow, Mr Anderson told the court the Chhayas were determined to continue servicing the community.
“(Greenbank is a) really under-resourced community, they’ve not simply closed down because it has become hard for them,” he said.
“They are passionate about their patients and their community.”
The charge stemmed from two consultations performed on October 11, 2018, by a clinical observer from Malaysia who had been undertaking training with Greenbank Pioneer Health with a view to working at the practice once he became registered.
When the trainee saw two patients on this day, one of whom was a child, he had yet to complete his Pre-Employment Structured Clinical Interview (PESCI), a key step in the registration of GPs, and in fact the trainee had failed it.
AHPRA initially brought 14 charges of knowingly or recklessly passing off the clinical observer as a registered GP, but at a hearing last year, Chhaya Medical Services Pty Ltd was found not guilty of 13 of those.
The court heard AHPRA had gone so far as to send a plainclothes informant to Greenbank Pioneer Health to try and catch the clinical observer in the act of seeing patients.
Magistrate Kerrie O’Callaghan declined to award costs against AHPRA.
She found Greenbank Pioneer Health did have procedures in place to structure the clinical observer’s training, but that it was inadvertently breached through little fault of their own.
No conviction was recorded.
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