Chemotherapy Treatment Error

Mr DULUK (Davenport) (14:45): My question is again to the Minister for Health. Given that the terms of reference of the Pehm report explicitly did not address issues of individual responsibility, what action is the minister going to take to assess that responsibility and take action?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:46): I think you are referring to the quality safety report into the chemotherapy issue. Of course, it is not the responsibility of the Australian Commission on Quality and Safety in Health Care to undertake disciplinary action against individual clinicians. There are two agencies responsible for that. The first one is AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency). They are undertaking investigations at the moment.

They will make a decision about what professional action to take against clinicians who are found to be involved in any wrongdoing. That is happening at the moment. As well as that, and parallel with that, the department is running its own internal disciplinary investigations into those clinicians to decide what disciplinary action, in terms of an employment arrangement, happens with those clinicians. There are two sets of investigations happening at the moment into clinicians who have been involved in this particular matter.