Instead, in May, he found himself promoted to the lead role of an organisation beset by a backlog of unresolved public complaints, and deepening mistrust from the health sector.

In October last year, then-health ombudsman Leon Atkinson-MacEwen was suspended over his response to a complaint against a former Mater Hospital anaesthetic technician who was charged with assault and fraud.

In November, Mr Brown was transferred from the Queensland Ombudsman office to become acting health ombudsman, and in May his appointment was confirmed for the three-year position.

Health Minister Steven Miles, when announcing Mr Brown's appointment in May, said Mr Brown had an "extensive understanding" of the Queensland health system.

Previously Queensland deputy ombudsman for seven years, Mr Brown held a long career in legal services before stepping into the struggling Health Ombudsman's office.

Some practitioners and patients were waiting up to two years for complaints to be resolved, the backlog growing longer and longer on the organisation’s website.

Concerned about the state of an regulation agency established to replace the already-criticised Health Quality and Complaints Commission, leading health bodies were vocal in their criticism.

“That was an area of concern, that public confidence in the office was probably low,” Mr Brown said.

“It’s confidence from the public, but also from practitioners and also from our co-regulator AHPRA [Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency].

“[A] key focus of mine, in addition to the focus on performance, has been trying to improve our relationships with key stakeholders.”

Since his tenure in the role began, Mr Brown has overseen a drastic reduction in the backlog of complaints, and productivity increase in the office.

He cited the strong support he had received from the office staff who worked in a “difficult job” as reason for the rapid improvement.

“Some of the criticism in the past - and it’s been a fairly universal criticism from all stakeholders - was the delay and length of time matters were taken to be dealt with in this office,” Mr Brown said.

As a statutory requirement the office has a timeframe of seven days to determine if they will accept a new complaint for investigation or not.

In 2014-2015, just 48 per cent of new complaints were accepted or dismissed within that timeframe. By 2017-2018, that number had jumped to 89 per cent.

Once a complaint has been accepted, the office has 30 to 60 days to assess a complaint, including gathering data and reports, medical records, statements and clinical advice.

In 2015-2016, only 32 per cent of decisions were made in that timeframe - last year that number had risen to 72 per cent.

The most serious aspect of the ombudsman’s work, professional misconduct investigations made against registered and unregistered health practitioners, were seeing delays of years.

Mr Atkinson-MacEwen had already acknowledged his office was struggling to respond to a massive spike in complaints, noting the problem in the organisation’s last annual report.

But Mr Brown said the past three years had seen a significant improvement for the office.

“We finalised 387 investigations in 17-18, and that was up from 209 in 16-17, and 163 in 15-16,” he said.

“We had almost 200 cases that were older than two years and we got that down to 48 cases that were older than two years.”

Mr Brown said some changes were already being made in the office when he stepped into the role, but introducing performance tracking measures and reorganising proceedures and priorities had significantly helped staff improve turn-around times.

While the complaint backlog has cleared, the sheer volume of complaints made to the office continues to rise.

Last year the office handled a 13 per cent increase in people contacting the office, and a 7 per cent increase in the number of complaints they accepted.

Mr Brown said the rise was not just in Queensland, but was being observed nationally across all ombudsman offices, as people became more aware of consumer rights and expectations around the standards of care offered.

Walking the fine line between honouring the ombudsman’s role as an independent regulator, and healing the necessary working relationships between peak health bodies, Mr Brown said he wanted the office to be trusted by the public and practitioners.

Building that trust involved meeting the organisations that had previously expressed their concern, including the Australian Medical Association Queensland.

“I’m slowly getting around to meeting the health practitioner boards, the Nursing and Midwifery Board, I’ve got a meeting with the Medical Board this week," Mr Brown said.

"Those meetings and building those relationships are important,

“[But] we are independent, and ultimately we’re responsible for regulating practitioners who are members of a lot of those associations.”