Known as Bill 36, the Health Professions and Occupations Act is poised to roll out in British Columbia. So save the date for April 1! The large reform bill would update our approach to regulating health professional boards. This amendment is a welcome and much-needed step to more robustly protect the public and ensure more transparency and accountability within our health system.
Josie Osborne, B.C.’s Minister of Health, pointed to the fact that the legislation is informed by a 2018 report’s recommendations. This report was authored by Harry Cayton, expert in regulatory administration under contract to the government of the province. Osborne pointed out that the new changes are meant to provide a better framework for ensuring patients are protected from discrimination and harm.
This isn’t just an issue of patient-centeredness, this is life or death — protecting patients from harm and discrimination. That’s been the purpose behind regulatory colleges, all along. This is more than updated legislation, this truly creates a stronger framework to make that happen,” Osborne said.
Bill 36 is 276 pages long with over 600 provisions. This legislation is a comprehensive reform to the oversight of regulatory colleges, which has been virtually unchanged for nearly 30 years. The new Act gives the Minister of Health the authority to appoint a director of discipline. This director will appoint a three-member tribunal to make unilateral disciplinary decisions. This tribunal will include a peer member from the profession under consideration. Further, it will have a public member and an expert in the field as well.
Well-intentioned, the government’s proposal drew a number of significant criticisms from local authorities, NGOs, academics, and others about the potential impact of their new legislation. Dr. Thompson, president of Doctors of B.C., made waves in mid-February after sharing his fears the new regulatory college beckons. He worries that it will drift from its traditional role of protecting the public towards the enforcement of health care policy.
As physicians, we’ve long operated under the assumption that nobody was more focused on our patients’ care than us. It’s probably the top of our individual mandates and that’s why we’ve always been a confident self-regulating, stated Dr. Thompson.
The bill establishes a new criminal offense for purposely providing misleading information. It has come under criticism for failing to describe what constitutes misinformation. Christoph Kind, a naturopath in Courtenay, decided to close his practice due to Bill 36. As a result, he is passionate about the intended and unintended consequences this law will have on individual practitioners and patient choice.
Kind remarked, “The vagueness of this law actually allows for abuse,” further stating, “By declaring health care providers a risk to cause harm to the public and imposing political control over the practice of medicine, I cannot with integrity or in any good conscience continue to practise in B.C.”
Doctors of B.C. has cropped up as an unlikely and powerful opponent of the legislation. As the organization that represents those 16,000 health care professionals, we have shared our critiques passionately. That’s why the organization has been sounding alarms about the new, concentrated structure. They fear it could cut against physicians’ autonomy, limiting their ability to practice in patients’ best interest.
The B.C. state government has made bold moves to clarify and simplify its regulatory landscape. Most dramatically, it has reduced the number of health-profession colleges from 22 in 2017 to just six by June 2024. This proposed consolidation will build greater efficiency and oversight across the health care system.
Now that the changes are being implemented Osborne stuck by her opinion that the changes will start building an environment of accountability and transparency among health professionals. “The role of colleges is to be responsible to the public, not its members,” she stated.
British Columbia’s health regulators landscape is about to undergo a revolutionary, Bill 36 Health Professions and Occupations Act (HPOA). Supporters and critics have eagerly debated how this bill will shape health care delivery throughout the province. This major reform will dramatically change how health care providers interact with regulatory agencies. Perhaps most importantly, it will shape their relationships with one another for decades to come.
