Doctors undermining COVID-19 fight need regulation, not ‘meaningless’ statements: experts | The Canadian News

Experts call for a review of regulatory bodies overseeing Canada’s health workers, as provincial health ministries and colleges evade responsibility for doctors accused of disseminating unverified medical information about COVID-19 vaccines.

A Global News investigation revealed this week that a web of doctors, mostly based in BC and Ontario, shared unproven medical information about vaccine side effects in an attempt to persuade the public not to be vaccinated while others were accused of issuing fake vaccine. exemptions or prescribing of unverified treatments.

As a result, Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott on Wednesday publicly urged the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) to suppress its members, calling the reports “extremely worrying”.

But experts say such comments do not go far enough to address the issue.

“It’s meaningless,” said Wayne Petrozzi, professor emeritus in the Department of Politics at Ryerson University.

“There is a limit to how much they have to listen to you. So reassuring the public that you are going to talk to them, that you are going to raise your voice with them, is no insurance at all, ”says Petrozzi.

Elliott’s remarks came when BC and Ontario’s health ministries and colleges apparently shifted the blame on each other to stem the flow of disinformation.

Elliott said Wednesday she will send a letter to the CPSO “urging them to do everything possible to put an end to this behavior.”

“They should consider all options to do so, including reviewing the licenses of doctors who have been found to be disseminating incorrect information,” Elliott said.

But the CPSO says they are already doing so.

More than 40 doctors are currently being investigated in connection with their actions regarding COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, a CPSO spokesman said. Seven placed suspensions or restrictions on their medical licenses.

Elliott and the Department of Health have so far refused to answer all questions from Global News about provincial doctors sharing unverified medical information and issuing vaccine releases. Questions about what more the CPSO can do to address this have also remained unanswered.

In BC, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia (CPSBC) continues to refuse to release the number of COVID-related complaints it has received.

None of the BC physicians who have been Global News highlighted for sharing unverified medical information or issuing false vaccine releases have placed restrictions or suspensions on their licenses.

Among BCs Health Protection Act, the CPSBC has the power to suspend a doctor’s license, or impose restrictions or conditions on it, before a trial, if necessary to “protect the public.”

The CPSBC did not respond to questions about why it refused to do so.

In August 2020, an all-party steering committee made its final report on how to overhaul the way BC’s healthcare workers are regulated – which Provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix said would bring “health professional regulation into the 21st century. “

The changes will reduce the province’s 20 regulatory colleges to six, change the management of college councils to enable equal public and professional membership and create a new oversight body with the task of setting standards across colleges and as a to take disciplinary authority.

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It has not yet been brought to the legislature.

When asked about the need for stricter laws regarding disinformation, the CPSBC said it had “made recommendations to the tripartite management committee”, including amendments to the Health Professions Act, but “only the government can update legislation.”

The BC Ministry of Health refused to answer specific questions.

When asked if it needed outside help to stem the flow of disinformation and speed up the investigation process, which could take years, the spokesman simply said “no”.

“Some people think the College is not doing enough and an equal number think the College is transgressing,” the spokesman said.

In Ontario, the Regulated Health Professions Act was amended in 2017 to allow the Minister of Health greater power in regulating College Committees and Panels and expanding the purposes for which the Minister may require the CPSO to collect information from members.

But experts say these changes need to go further.

Dr. Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist at the University of Toronto, said he was “shocked” at the number of doctors being examined for COVID-related issues in the province.

“This is proof that the system may not be working,” Bowman said.

“When we look at the impact of a protracted public health crisis, it’s very serious.”

Bowman said the argument in favor of freedom of speech “is not relevant” in this context, as it is “medical information that moves against the principles of medicine.”

“There is a difference between freedom of speech as a citizen and freedom of speech as a profession. Physicians have an absolutely elevated ethical responsibility to the community, and the nature of medicine itself is that the platform is evidence-based science and research. “

Trudo Lemmens, Scholl chair of health law and policy at the University of Toronto, said colleges are currently doing more to punish members for misinformation than they did in the past, but they “need to be more proactive.”

He says in the past, a lack of action has sometimes had drastic consequences.

“Canadian doctors have been involved in misrepresenting findings and contributing to the over-prescribing of drugs, including, for example, in the opioid context, which … is the contributing factor to the opioid crisis we currently have.”

However, Lemmens says the colleges need to make sure they are “running a fine line” so that they do not stifle a normal debate.

“You want to be careful not to impose an excessive level of policing on the colleges that will cause them to interfere with normal debate within the medical community about the safety and effectiveness of medications or vaccines,” he says.

Petrozzi said Elliott’s remarks were “meaningless” and more concrete steps needed to be taken.

“[We need] the government of Ontario to establish a framework of accountability that is meaningful, substantial and transparent for the various self-regulatory professions in this province, ”he says.

Self-regulated professions, as in healthcare, need “much more in the way of transparency than we currently have”, as self-regulatory bodies struggle with the protection of both the public interest and its own, Petrozzi says.

He added a review is needed to allow government representatives to investigate the professions, increase openness and transparency in its activities and decision-making and put stricter rules in place for the timeliness of investigations.

“What we now have in place about … self-regulatory professions is a system in which the good foxes are put in charge to keep an eye on all the other foxes – and to act when they encounter a bad fox who the foxes want to hurt chickens. [It is] absent from a robust system of transparency and robust processes of external evaluation.

“We should not be comfortable being the chickens.”

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