Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003

About the HPCA Act

The HPCAA is about public safety. Its purpose is to protect the health and safety of members of the public by providing mechanisms to ensure the life long competence of health practitioners

The HPCAA builds on the framework created by ealier legislation, in particular the Medical Practitioners Act 1995. All the major concepts of the Medical Practitioners Act 1995 have been carried forward into the HPCAA, adjusted where necessary to generic terms to provide a framework that can apply to all health practitioners not just doctors

The Act incorporates the basic principles of ongoing competence and the separation of the registration process from the disciplinary process. The Act also continues provisions for the declaration of protected quality assurance activities that were previously contained in the Medical Practitioners Act 1995.

Important key protections are in place, with provisions that will ensure that:

only health practitioners who are registered under the new Act will be able to use the titles protected by the Act or claim to be practising a profession that is regulated by the Act
registered health practitioners will not be permitted to practise outside their scopes of practice
registration authorities will be required to certify that a practitioner is competent to practise in their scope of practice when they issue an annual practising certificate
certain activities will be restricted and will only be able to be performed by registered health practitioners.

Who administers the HPCA Act?

The Ministry of Health administers the Act. This includes managing the consultation processes to enable the Minister to appoint the members of the authorities.

However, while the Ministry has certain functions under the Act, the primary responsibility and accountability intentionally falls on the relevant registration authorities. The Act is very much about handing to the authorities responsibility for – and providing them with tools for - ensuring that health practitioners are, and remain, competent and safe to practise.

The new Act contains few powers but important powers for the Minister. They reflect the primary purpose of the Act to protect the public and the Minister's obligations to the public. In return for the increased powers for the professions in respect of the clinical decisions that relate to fitness for registration and competence to practise, there are checks and balances to ensure that registration authorities are held accountable for complying with the provisions of the Act, through the Minister to Parliament. These include the Minister's powers to appoint authority members, to determine mechanisms to facilitate resolution of disputes over scopes of practice and to gazette restricted activities that can be performed only by practitioners registered under the HPCAA.

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Page last updated: 27 September 2007