Mary's story

Mary complained to our office about how Ahpra and a National Board handled a notification made about her. The Board had decided to take no further action after investigating the notification. 

One of Mary’s concerns related to how Ahpra initially informed her of the notification. She was concerned that Ahpra did not explain the seriousness of the concerns raised in the notification during the initial phone call with her and that she had to wait to receive the details of the notification. 

Mary was also concerned about the time Ahpra took to assess the notification. She said that Ahpra informed her of the notification more than 2 months after it was received, and it took another 7 months for Ahpra to finalise its assessment. She also told us that Ahpra did not provide her with regular updates while assessing the notification. 

What we found 

As a first step, our office provided Ahpra with an opportunity to respond to Mary’s concerns through our early resolution transfer process. In response, Ahpra acknowledged that the notification process can be stressful for practitioners and shared that it had given Mary information on where to seek support. In response to Mary’s concerns that she did not receive regular updates, Ahpra noted the National Law only requires it to provide 3-monthly updates when a notification is being investigated. In Mary’s case, the notification was not investigated and was finalised in the assessment stage. Ahpra also noted that changes to the structure of the team handling Mary’s matter affected its management, causing a delay in progressing it to the Board. 

Mary told our office that Ahpra’s response did not adequately resolve her concerns about its communication with her and the time it took to assess the notification. 

We then made preliminary inquiries with Ahpra to determine whether an investigation into Mary’s concerns was warranted. After assessing Ahpra’s response to our preliminary inquiries, we decided to investigate Mary’s complaint. 

Our investigation found that Ahpra did not manage the notification about Mary in a timely manner and that its communication with Mary could have been better. 

Complaint outcome 

We provided feedback to Ahpra that it should consider amending its approach to assessing notifications to ensure matters that raise sensitive issues are managed in a timely way, even if the information Ahpra obtains suggests that the practitioner does not pose a high risk to the public. This is because the protracted management of notifications that raise sensitive issues is likely to cause distress both to the practitioner and notifier. 

We also provided feedback to Ahpra that it should provide regular updates to practitioners and notifiers on the progress of a notification, even if the notification is in the assessment stage. We also provided feedback to Ahpra that it should ensure staff follow internal policies on initial calls with practitioners who are the subject of a notification, which outline that staff should provide practitioners with a summary of the notification and the issues the National Board is likely to consider.