Plans to conduct regular audits of doctors' practices are good news for patients, writes Eithne Donnellan
It is generally accepted that there are likely to be a few bad apples in every profession. We know from past experience that medicine is no exception.
We have had the scandals of the unnecessary removal of the wombs of patients at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda over several years without anyone apparently noticing.
We have also had cases of doctors sexually assaulting patients and giving patients unrealistic expectations about the treatment offered for diseases such as cancer.
In these cases it was only after it received complaints from patients that the Medical Council, the regulatory body for the medical profession, took action.
It held fitness-to-practise inquiries, found the doctors guilty of professional misconduct and struck them off the medical register.
However, the council has a history of being reactive rather than proactive, reacting to complaints from the public rather than going out and actively looking for problems among members of the medical profession.
Thus its new plan to initiate random audits of the performance of up to 1,000 doctors a year is welcome. It is good news for patients.
As the president of the Medical Council, Dr John Hillery, put it yesterday, the aim of this project is to find doctors that are under-performing before they do any harm. Nobody could quibble with this.
Of course it goes without saying that the vast majority of doctors behave in a professional manner, keep up to date and have nothing but the best interests of their patients at heart.
But it is a fact that complaints to the council about doctors are increasing.
It received 156 complaints in the first six months of last year, a 20 per cent increase on the same period in 2004.
Given that international evidence suggests that 5 per cent of doctors can be problematic at any given time, and that there are 8,000 doctors in the State in independent practice, there are likely to be many more doctors out there who need to be helped to better care for their patients or who need to be sanctioned.
The sooner, therefore, that the audits begin the better.
It is also vital that these audits are underpinned by legislation because if they remain voluntary many doctors are unlikely to co-operate with them.