The Summer Hill branch of the ALP has passed a motion supporting better compensation arrangements for injured patients. Sarah was invited to talk at the June meeting of the branch. She explained that since the insurance crisis of the early 2000s, the medical indemnity insurance market had become highly profitable but there were still very few injured patients receiving compensation. Please support our petition for no-fault compensation for Australian injured patients.

She told the meeting how in 2011 the Productivity Commission had looked in detail at litigation and no-fault compensation as means for delivering compensation to injured patients. The Commission came down squarely in favour of no-fault compensation. Among the disadvantages of litigation was the inordinate time taken to finalise claims: 60% of medical negligence claims were still not finalised two years after filing, and 15% were still not complete five years after initiation. Litigation claims were also more expensive on a case-by-case basis. Overall, the Productivity Commission found, “no-fault systems were likely to produce generally superior outcomes compared with fault-based systems” and at a lower cost.

Sarah explained that the Productivity Commission had laid down a blueprint for a no-fault compensation scheme for medical treatment injuries including:

• a single comprehensive national database;
• an expert panel for deciding the eligibility of claims;
• a legislated timeframe for deciding claims (in New Zealand the legislated timeframe is nine months);
• no determination of fault but notification where there is a risk to public safety;
• varying premiums based on the relative safety of the practitioner’s or hospital’s practice.

Sarah pointed out that failure to implement the medical and general streams of the National Injury Insurance Scheme (NIIS) had contributed to the cost blowout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), as the NIIS was intended to be partly funded by insurance premiums whereas the NDIS is funded solely from taxpayer funds.

She emphasised the urgency of the issue: the ALP commitment to the NIIS was included in the 2021 ALP national platform but is not mentioned in the draft 2023 national platform, which will be debated and adopted at the national conference in Brisbane on 17-19 August. The two candidates standing for the position of national delegate in Sydney’s Inner West have each agreed that if they are elected, they will work with Sarah on getting the commitment to the NIIS reinstated in the national platform.

In its motion, the Summer Hill branch called upon the NSW Minister for Health to include patient harm and appropriate compensation in the Terms of Reference for the forthcoming special commission of enquiry into New South Wales health services.

The Branch also called on the Federal Government to:

• Ensure that the commitment to the National Injury Insurance Scheme (NIIS), the proposed federation of state-based injury schemes first recommended by the Productivity Commission in 2011, remains in the 2023 ALP national platform;
• Encourage implementation of the NIIS, in particular its medical treatment injury stream, in order to improve sustainability of the NDIS and ensure that injured patients are not left unacknowledged and uncompensated;
• Enable national data on compensation claims and their outcomes to be collected once again;
• Establish a review of the statute law on medical negligence to examine whether it provides equality before the law between injured patients and the health professionals, hospitals, government authorities and insurers which defend medical negligence claims;
• Legislate a time frame for delivering any compensation under the scheme of not more than 9 months.

Please continue to encourage everyone you know to sign and share our petition. We are very grateful for your continuing support.

Sarah and Vickie