The Health Professions Procedural Code is Schedule 2 to the Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991, and it sets out the common procedural framework for complaints, investigations, and discipline across all of Ontario’s regulated health colleges. Although each college has its own profession-specific act (the Medicine Act, 1991, for physicians; the Nursing Act, 1991, for nurses; and so on), the procedural rules that govern how complaints are received, investigated, and adjudicated come from the Code.
For medical malpractice lawyers and their clients, the Code matters in two main ways. First, it governs the parallel regulatory process that a patient may pursue at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, separate from any civil claim. Second, it defines the framework within which the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal operates, including the categories of professional misconduct, the available penalties, the rights of the complainant and the registrant, and the rules around publication of decisions.
Posts tagged Health Professions Procedural Code analyze how Ontario tribunals and courts have interpreted the Code, including decisions on procedural fairness, the scope of mandatory reporting, and the interaction between regulatory and civil proceedings.
Ontario discipline tribunal grants conditional reinstatement to psychiatrist whose licence was revoked in 2018 for serious professional boundary violations.
An Ontario tribunal ruled physicians have no Charter privacy interest in their patients’ records. Subsequent proceedings produced a 12-month suspension.
A family physician suspended for 12 months after charging patients for Accessible Parking Permit applications and certifying eligibility his charts did not support.
A physician was suspended for seven months after a CPSO audit found he had failed to comply with restrictions imposed in 2016 after a finding of sexual abuse.
A Northern Ontario ER physician was found guilty of misconduct and separately found incompetent for sustained COVID-19 misinformation across a two-year period.
A general surgeon was suspended for 18 months after sexual misconduct against an ultrasound technician at his hospital, with a prior discipline history weighing heavily.
A family physician was suspended for five months after using OHIP fraudulently while resident in New York. Discipline for non-clinical conduct under the HPPC.
A clinical immunologist crossed professional boundaries with a 30-year patient and tried to procure a false alibi during the CPSO investigation that followed.
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