What we’re calling for from the colleges

Dear colleges of physicians and surgeons:One year ago this month, we published the results of a Medical Post investigation on the state of you, the nation’s colleges. The primary finding was that your total budgets as Canada’s medical regulators had nearly doubled between 2004 and 2011. However, our goal when we started the investigation had been to come up with numbers that would allow our readers, Canada’s doctors, to compare how well you were doing at key indicators such as complaint handling times, discipline hearing times and how much you spend on administration.The report had some numbers but because you all operate somewhat differently and track information differently it wasn’t possible to come up with rankings showing which of you are best—and worst—at these key metrics.In December, beside the editorial we ran the Medical Post campaign icon at right and have periodically run it since beside stories on efforts to reduce frivolous and vexatious complaints with the colleges.So with this “campaign” I am calling on the colleges for the following:1. Comparable metricsI understand that the colleges all operate under different provincial laws, but there are certain basic functions that you all perform. In my view, improving your accountability and transparency means working toward providing inter-college comparable data on just these kinds of metrics I mention above.So maybe each year at the annual meeting of your national body, the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada (FMRAC), you’d release rankings on how you all did on such things as complaint handling times-—showing that some colleges did great and some have room for improvement.2. Canada-wide rulesCanadian patients and doctors expect Canada-wide rules. However, right now—as our cover story notes—in the wake of new medical marijuana regulations Health Canada has imposed, you are all in various stages of rolling out your slightly different policies on this issue.I understand that everything seems like it should be simpler to do when looking in from the outside and that you, the pro-vincial colleges, must adapt to this change in the context of your existing regulations, guidelines and legislation. How---ever, the traditional twin roles of medical regulators are to “protect the public and guide the profession.”I would think the ultimate guidance to professionals on this file should be the same from every college of physicians and surgeons. After all, what possible reason could we have for regional variations about how doctors should handle medical marijuana?Canada is a country of only 35 million people and we have 13 different provincial and territories medical regulators.In general, I would urge you to continue to boost your co-operation and take as a general goal to be as national as possible.3. Lower MD anxietyAdmittedly this is anecdotal, but I talk to and exchange emails with doctors in every part of this country and the level of anxiety about college investigations seems, well, really high.I have the sense that some physicians feel your investigators could find something wrong with anyone who happened to come under their gaze.I get that doctors are always going to have mixed feelings about medical regulators, and as the editor of a doctors’ newspaper I may hear from a skewed sample, but still. . . . Maybe it isn’t enough for each college to survey just your own members about how you are doing, and instead you should work co-operatively through FMRAC to survey doctors in every region to allow for comparisons between the colleges. And yes, you should make the results public.Hell, I’d also suggest you should work with your equivalents in other nations and see, for instance, whether Australian, British and American doctors have as much anxiety about their regulators as Canadian doctors do.

What we’re calling for from the colleges

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