A third local ALP branch, Marrickville Central, has passed a motion supporting fairer compensation arrangements for injured patients. Sarah was invited to talk at the July meeting of the branch. She emphasised the urgency of the issue: the ALP commitment to the National Injury Insurance Scheme (NIIS), which included no-fault compensation for catastrophic medical treatment injuries, was included in the 2021 national platform but is not mentioned in the draft 2023 national platform, which will be debated and adopted at the ALP national conference in Brisbane on 17-19 August. The national delegate for the seat of Grayndler in Sydney’s Inner West, Darcy Byrne, has agreed to work on getting the commitment to the NIIS reinstated in Labor’s national platform. Please support our petition for no-fault compensation for Australian injured patients.

Sarah 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. 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. Overall, it 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 catastrophic medical treatment injuries and a pathway for expanding the scheme to cover other significant injuries. She pointed out that the forthcoming special commission of enquiry into NSW health services provided an ideal opportunity for examining the issue of patient harm and appropriate compensation. In its motion, the Marrickville Central branch called upon the NSW Minister for Health, Ryan Park, to include patient harm and appropriate compensation in the Terms of Reference for the special commission of enquiry into NSW health services, which is expected to start in late 2023.

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;
• Restore funding for the Medical Indemnity National Collection (MINC), which was cut by the Coalition government in 2015, and thus 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;
• Encourage state and territory governments to legislate a time frame of not more than nine months for deciding medical treatment injury claims under the scheme.
  
  Please encourage everyone you know to sign and share our petition. We are very grateful for your continuing support.
  
  Sarah and Vickie