Abstract
Peer review groups arranged by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) in Australia and New Zealand are once again covered by qualified privilege.
Qualified privilege also applies to practice visits in Australia with New Zealand practice visits to be covered next year.
The current approval will continue for five years.
Under Australia's Commonwealth Qualified Privilege Scheme, health care professionals participating in a declared quality assurance activity are provided specific protection.
The aim of providing this protection is to encourage health care professionals to fully participate in quality assurance activities.
Declaration of a quality assurance activity protects the confidentiality of information that identifies individuals that becomes known solely as a result of declared quality assurance activities by:
Making it an offence to make a record of that information or to disclose that information to another person or to a court.
Specifying that a person cannot be required to disclose, or produce documents containing, such information to a court except in certain limited circumstances.
Participants in a declared activity must not divulge information that identifies individuals that became known solely as a result of the participant's activity.
Failure to comply could lead to a maximum penalty under the legislation of imprisonment for two years.
However, the activity must include disclosure of information that concerns the quality of services assessed, evaluated or studied or factors affecting the quality of the service.
The appropriate disclosure of this sort of information is required but it must not identify individuals unless consent to do so is given by those individuals.
In the past there has been some misunderstanding about the purposes and scope of protection provided by a declaration.
For example, one misunderstanding is that a declaration overrides the general law relating to confidentiality and patient consent and thereby obviates any requirement that may exist to seek patient consent for a patient's medical records to be viewed by other than a treating doctor.
A declaration is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not patient consent is required.
Another misunderstanding is that ‘all’ information generated as a result of a declared activity can be kept confidential.
This is not the case. The only information protected by a declaration is that which identifies individuals.
In fact, the legislation requires participants of declared activities to report on the progress and outcomes of the activity (without identifying individuals).
These are only two examples of areas not covered by a declaration.
A full description of the scope of the protection provided by qualified privilege will be mailed to all participants in the RANZCP's CPD program.
For further information about Australian qualified privilege, visit http://www.health.gov.au/pq/sq/qadecl.htm