Our Six Strategic Directions - Healthy Workforce • Healthy Hospitals • Healthy Partnerships • Healthy Communities • Healthy Resources • Healthy Leadership

Search:

  
Delivering a Healthy WA
Office of Safety and Quality in Healthcare
To promote customer focused, safe, quality health care in Western Australia

Conducting quality improvement activities with qualified privilege provided by Commonwealth QP Legislation

The investigation and analysis of a clinical incident reported to AIMS is registered as a quality assurance activity under the Health Insurance Act 1973: Part VC, Health Insurance Act 1992. The Act provides statutory protection of identified information collected solely for the purposes of the AIMS process. This protection means that:

  • identified data cannot be disclosed to third parties not involved in the incident or the direct management of the incident
  • a court cannot compel information from the AIMS system as evidence
  • hospitals and health services cannot produce the AIMS form as evidence for a defense in any situation or in courts of law where an incident may have progressed to a litigious event

Disclosure of identified data can incur a penalty of imprisonment for a term of up to 2 years. The previous declaration for protection expired at midnight on June 6 2006. The new protection was not declared until 12:01 AM on June 9, which means that the intervening 48 hours were not protected by qualified privilege. If you have any question please contact us.

There are some changes to the new declaration of AIMS, specifically:

  • The notification phase is not protected and information generated in this phase may be available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act 1992, or by discovery in legal proceedings
  • Information captured during the investigation and analysis phase will remain protected. This information must not be provided to any person who is not part of the investigation and analysis of the incident