The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) of the United Kingdom is the oversight body for UK’s health and social work professions regulators. The PSA has just updated its Standards for Regulators which sets out the criteria for how it assesses and reports on their performance.
Some highlights that may be of interest to Canadian regulators include:
- The number of standards has been reduced to 16 (from 18).
- Despite the trend in some jurisdictions, the PSA has maintained its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion standard.
- As part of the good governance standard, a regulator must deliver evidence that it provides a route for staff members to raise concerns, such as a whistleblower policy or a “freedom to speak up guardian”. The latter, a UK phenomenon, provides independent support to a worker who wishes to raise concerns about safety, bullying, or unethical practices within their organization.
- Another aspect of meeting the good governance standard is that the regulator must assess its internal “culture” and implement recommendations flowing from that assessment.
- Regulators are expected to develop working relationships with other relevant organizations such as patient groups, professional associations, unions, employers, and other regulators. This includes, when feasible, alignment of guidance documents for registrants with those published by other regulators.
- Professional standards and guidelines need to consider “current and future needs of the healthcare landscape (such as technology, partnership working between patients / service users and registrants, the need for flexibility, move to more community-based care, preventative healthcare).” Interestingly, artificial intelligence is not specifically mentioned.
- The PSA expects to see “[d]ata on the number of illegal practice cases reviewed by the regulator per year, and examples of how these were managed.”
- Each regulator is expected to develop, monitor, and update its quality assurance activities.
- Each regulator is expected to engage with others (e.g., employers) to ensure that they understand what sorts of conduct concerns it does and does not deal with.
- Regulators are also expected to provide information about their “[a]pproach to reaching underrepresented groups who may wish to raise a complaint.”
- Several components of compassionate regulation are monitored, including providing a clear explanation to participants about the complaints and discipline process, regular updates in an agreed upon format for participants, timely disposition of concerns, and trained staff who can identify and support / refer vulnerable participants.
- Decision makers must be trained and evaluated to ensure consistent regulatory decisions in accordance with published guidelines.
- Concerns need to be risk-assessed in a timely manner so that appropriate action (e.g., interim orders, fast tracking) is pursued.
Canadian regulators should not be surprised if these criteria are applied to the evaluation of their performance where that is not already the case.
