Complaints about decisions by the national health practitioner regulator and the boards that regulate Australia's medical professionals more than doubled in the year to August.
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That doubling of complaints triggered the small National Health Practitioner Ombudsman and Privacy Commissioner's office to appoint a new "complaints liaison officer" to help address "the increasing complaint and inquiry workload".
The Ombudsman oversees complaints about decisions made by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and the 14 national boards it oversees that regulate medical practitioners from doctors and nurses to psychologists and chiropractors.
After clearing a 350-strong backlog of complaints from previous years in 2014-15, the number of complaints made fell to 75 that year, but more than doubled to 181 complaints for the 2015-16 financial year – a figure more consistent with long-term averages.
Ombudsman and Privacy Commissioner Samantha Gavel said the increase in complaints had coincided with the launch of the office's new website earlier this year.
But she said it also coincided were greater media attention on "issues relating to health practitioner regulation" as a result of "high profile investigations in a number of states".
Ms Gavel said the new complaints liaison officer joined the existing team in August, which previously included two senior investigators, a senior project officer and the Ombudsman herself.
She said the office regularly reviewed its workload "to ensure the office is suitably staffed to meet workload requirements and the recruitment of this position is part of that on-going process".
Most complaints to the Ombudsman's office were related to how the AHPRA had dealt with "notifications" of concerning behaviour or medical practices among qualified medical practitioners to the authority or one of the registration boards, most of which related to doctors, nurses and midwives.
The Ombudsman's latest monthly complaints report, for August this year, shows the number of complaints received jumped from 19 in the year to August 2015 to 53 in the year to August 2016.
Of the 53 complaints lodged in August this year, 22 were regarding the medical board, 12 were regarding the nursing and midwifery board, seven were about AHPRA and six were about the psychology board.
That was part of a wider trend of "approaches" made to the Ombudsman, which included 51 inquiries in the year to August this year, up from 32 in the corresponding period in 2015 – or a total of 104 "approaches" in the year to August 2016, up from 51 the previous year.
Some 43 per cent of complaints lodged in the year to August 2016 were about "notifications" by members of the public, 21 per cent were about "notifications" by medical practitioners, 17 per cent were classified as "other" and 19 per cent were about registration delays, policy or unfair process issues.
