Modern and efficient fitness to practise adjudication

Background

In summer 2010, against a backdrop of reviews of arm’s-length bodies across Government and concerns about value for money and economic efficiency, plans for the launch of the Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator (OPHA) were put on hold and the Department of Health consulted on options to increase the independence of adjudication of fitness to practise cases in health professional regulation. After this consultation, in November 2010, the Coalition Government announced its intention not to proceed with establishing OHPA.

Following that decision, we were asked by the Secretary of State to provide advice on modernising and improving the efficiency of fitness to practise adjudication among the health professional regulators. This is a statutory request under section 26A of the NHS and Healthcare Professions Act 2002 (as amended). The intention was to capture what OHPA had learnt during the course of its preparatory work and use this alongside our own experience and the views of interested parties to improve adjudication of fitness to practise across the nine UK health professional regulators. We were asked to set out a vision of what a modern, cost effective and efficient fitness to practise adjudication system would look like for health professional regulators.  

Summary

We concluded that although adjudication has moved on since 2004, a number of issues are present today. There remains a strong sense of inconsistency in outcomes both within and between regulators. Good practice is not consistently demonstrated. People who raise a concern to a professional regulator find the process stressful and daunting. There remains confusion about the purpose of fitness to practise. We made a number of recommendations to the regulators, to the Law Commission and to ourselves.