Registration processes do not occur instantaneously; applicants send in applications for registration, and regulators may then respond, at an administrative level, to advise that some requirements have been met but others have not. Until recently, the role of the Health Professions Review Board (HPRB) has been to intervene only at the end of the process, [Read More]

Health professionals who engage in arguments in their capacity as employers, or as former employers – which arguments may include profanity and the throwing if tissue boxes – are likely to fall short of “unprofessional conduct” as that term is used in the BC Health Professions Act. This was the principle underlying the decision of [Read More]

While the HPRB can accept new documentary evidence that was not before an Inquiry Committee, the HPRB may also refuse to accept new evidence where it relates to a time period before or after the period originally identified by the complaint, concerns parties other than the registrant-respondents, concerns care facilities other than the facility where [Read More]

A five-member panel of the HPRB examined the practice of one health college allowing complaints to be dismissed, apparently following review and assessment by its Inquiry Committee, but in fact dismissed by the Registrar, in Complainant v. College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC, Decision No. 2011-HPA-0018(a) (January 6, 2012). The HPRB stated that College [Read More]

An investigation may fail to be adequate where an Inquiry Committee fails to make inquiries addressing conflicting assertions of complainant and registrant, and instead simply accepts the assertions of the registrant, as illustrated in Complainant v. College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC, Decision No. 2010-HPA-0108(b). In this case, a physician terminated a prescription for [Read More]