Francisco’s story

Francisco’s legal representative made a complaint to the Ombudsman about Ahpra’s delay in handling a notification made about Francisco four years ago. Immediate action had been taken by the Board against Francisco, which was said to have caused him ‘significant personal, professional and financial harm’. Francisco also believed Ahpra’s complaint team’s response to his concerns about the delay was unsatisfactory.

Although the notification was still active with Ahpra, our office made preliminary inquiries into the complaint due to our concern about the alleged length of the delay.

What we found

Our preliminary inquiries found the following:

• There were several periods of inactivity in Ahpra’s management of the notification.
• Ahpra could have taken witness statements and requested an independent opinion report earlier in the investigation to improve its timeliness.
• There were external factors that contributed to the delay, which included waiting on information from another entity for seven months.
• Ahpra’s required three-monthly investigation updates were considerably delayed and were only provided when requested by Francisco’s legal representative.

Complaint outcome

We reiterated the Ombudsman’s strong view that where immediate action has been taken the investigation of the matter should be completed as promptly as possible. In response, Ahpra agreed to progress the investigation as a matter of priority.

Ahpra also wrote to Francisco to provide more information about the next steps to finalise the investigation and provided a further apology for its delay. Ahpra’s complaint team had previously also offered an apology and an update on recent investigatory activities.

Our office reassured Francisco that his matter would be considered as part of our ongoing monitoring of notifications Ahpra has been managing for over 12 months (aged notifications).