Press Council backs Herald's medical series

The Press Council has not upheld four complaints made by the Medical Association (NZMA) against the New Zealand Herald.

The NZMA complained about a series of articles and two editorials published over six consecutive days in February.

The series focused on a Herald investigation of patients who had suffered "medical misadventure."

The Herald also published two editorials arising from the coverage of the patients' views and the conclusions which the Herald had arrived at as a result of its investigation.

The NZMA complained that one editorial criticised New Zealand doctors for being unaccountable and being almost the only ones in the world who were not fully answerable at law when they were negligent and did serious harm.

They claimed that the editorial did not berate other health professionals for being unaccountable, despite the fact that the Herald's case studies in the same edition highlighted medical errors by other health professionals who were not doctors.

The NZMA was particularly concerned about an article, headed "Doctors duck blunder levy," reporting that the 1992 ACC Act allowed for medical professionals to be levied for a medical misadventure fund. However, this levy had not been implemented.

The article quoted Sir William Birch, the architect of the 1992 legislation which scrapped lump sum compensation, as saying that there was a clear intention to collect the levy but "the medical profession itself did not support it."

The NZMA protested that once again doctors were being singled out among health professionals, in this case, to avoid paying a levy which the Government had never implemented.

The council said the NZMA's concerns were that the series conveyed the general impression that doctors were not accountable for their mistakes and that they have deliberately avoided paying an ACC levy to a medical misadventure fund.

"Taken in the wider context which the NZMA suggests should be adopted, the articles were not directed at criticism of doctors, or other health professionals. Rather, the emphasis was on the failings of the ACC system and the inability of individuals to sue health professionals for negligence," the council said.

"The Herald series highlighted the complex issues surrounding the ACC's role in compensation for medical misadventure and the articles were a wide-ranging examination of the current problems facing mistreated patients."

The council it was an important issue which could have benefited from being developed further.

- NZPA