There are two ways in which doctors can avoid being accountable for what they do and say.
The first is to refuse to provide you with copies of your health records and information. There is a law which says they should – the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002. But these could be awkward for those doctors who don’t want to be accountable for what they’ve done or said, so they ignore the law and don’t provide them – and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
There’s a NSW Privacy Commissioner, Elizabeth Coombs, who’s supposed to police the law, but she’s indescribably useless, (we can provide you with plenty of evidence of this,) – and nobody cares, least of all, Michael Baird and Jillian Skinner.
And Ms Coombs obviously doesn’t care. Why should she? She’s not held accountable by anyone, no doubt she’s on a generous salary, will retire on a generous pension, and upon retirement, if precedent is to be followed, like Andrew Dix, she’ll get an award from the Queen for her services to medical regulation.
To try and ensure that you are dealing with a doctor who will provide you with your health records and information, this is what you need to do.
(1) Email them before you consult and/or use them asking, “If I was to become a patient of yours, how would I get copies of my health records and information?” If they haven’t got an ordinary email address, or they don’t respond to your email, or they don’t respond in a way that satisfies you – you have been warned!
(2) If you proceed to consulting them, after your first consultation email them asking for copies of your health records and information in relation. This will tell you how you are likely to go in the future in dealing with them, although there will always be the temptation for them not to provide you with anything that might make them look bad.
The second way in which doctors avoid being accountable for what they do and say is to NEVER respond in written form to anything you send them. If a doctor doesn’t have an ordinary email address, or doesn’t respond to emails sent to them, or doesn’t respond in a satisfactory way, you are stark raving mad to rely on anything they do or say. You have to realise that many/most of the things doctors, (and others,) say to you is rubbish – there’s some protection against this if you get things in writing.