This aspect of the operation of the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, just another one, is quite absurd.
When someone lodges a complaint about a health care worker, the Commission sends a copy of the complaint to the health care worker concerned, asking for a response, but copies of any responses received back are never made available to the complainant, NEVER!
It’s like, during a court case, the prosecution lawyers being asked to leave the court while the defence lawyers present their case – ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE!
We don’t know whether this is something imposed by the legislators, or an idea that Commissioner Dawson and her people have come up with.
The result, as a number of our readers have experienced, is that the complainees, (if there is such a word?) tell lie after lie after lie – lies that the complainants could easily demolish if given the opportunity, but the only things they learn about what the complainees have said is bits and pieces included in the decision they receive from the HCCC after the HCCC has made it’s decision.
And even if the complainant decides to ask for a review of it’s decision, making it is made unnecessarily difficult by the fact that he or she still doesn’t know exactly what the complainee has said. We know – from experience.
In many cases, perhaps in most cases, all that would ever be needed is that the complainant’s complaint and the complainees’ response be made publicly available to the people of New South Wales to enable them to better decide whether consulting the health care worker concerned might be a good idea or not.
To us, it’s just another Berejiklian Government joke.