Qualified privilege
» Qualified privilege options
» No qualified privilege
» State Qualified Privilege Legislation
Note: Commonwealth Qualified Privilege Legislation (Expired 9th June 2011)
» Quality Improvement Committee annual reports
What is qualified privilege?
The qualified privilege scheme is designed to encourage hospitals and health professionals to conduct quality improvement activities and investigate the causes and contributing factors of clinical incidents by protecting certain information from disclosure and protecting clinicians involved in the activity from civil liability.
Why is qualified privilege necessary?
To improve the safety and quality of health care, it is important to review what went wrong, and to find ways to prevent the event from happening again. Medical staff are more likely to talk about the medical mistakes they made if they know that the information they disclose cannot legally be disclosed to anyone. Disclosure of medical mistakes allows the identification of environments conducive to errors, and this facilitates system redesign to create an environment in which it is impossible to make a mistake.
What information is protected from disclosure?
The information that is generated or obtained solely as a result of the quality improvement activities of a registered quality improvement committee is protected under qualified privilege. This includes information such as the outcomes of reviews and the results of root cause investigations.
Factual information that can be obtained from other places is not protected by the legislation, for example, the patient’s medical record is not protected.
What is a registered quality improvement committee?
A registered quality improvement committee is a committee that has been formally established by the board of the hospital, and approved as a registered quality improvement committee by the Minister for Health.