Health workers to face checks on national register

PATIENTS will be able to check for dodgy doctors under a national registration scheme that could also tighten controls on foreign health workers.

PATIENTS will be able to check for dodgy doctors under a national registration scheme that could also tighten controls on foreign health workers.

The register, being set up by state and territory health ministers, is due to be operational within two years. face

It would cover every doctor, nurse, psychologist, phsyiotherapist, dentist, podiatrist, optometrist, chiropractor, pharmacist and osteopath working in Australia.

Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson, who chairs the Council of Australian Governments health ministers' council, yesterday said the register would prevent health workers struck off in one state from moving across borders to practise.

A website was being set up so health departments could automatically cross-check whether a new doctor had been deregistered or disciplined elsewhere.

"We just do the manual checks (now)," Mr Robertson said. "We learnt some pretty hard lessons along the way."

He said the national system would draw up consistent rules for hiring foreign doctors. The states and territories use different systems to check the documentation and qualifications of overseas-trained medicos.

"It's good in places like the UK and Canada and South Africa, where there is consistency and reliability in terms of qualifications they are trying to prove," he said. "In other countries, we need to be very, very careful.

"Sometimes in war-torn countries, the registration may be sound but they have trouble proving it. Then you come up against people who are pretty clever and engage in fraud."

Mr Robertson said Queensland had tightened its system and would not water it down. "We've got the toughest registration requirements of any state," he said.

"I don't believe going to a national registration system should be a race to the bottom."

A single website should be set up for patients to check the qualifications of, and any restrictions placed upon, health workers. "It would be something I would be insisting on," Mr Robertson said. "That's one way to empower patients and health consumers, to challenge or at least ask questions as to whether the level of care they are receiving is safe."

Mr Robertson said health ministers had not decided whether to set up a national system for dealing with complaints against health workers.

"I'm not sure that's essential," he said.

"Each state has its independent complaints system."