Summary

There are 18 authorities in New Zealand responsible for registering health practitioners and certifying that those practitioners remain competent to practise. They also carry out other functions, such as setting clinical and cultural competence standards for practitioners and managing complaints about their conduct and competence.

Together, health regulatory authorities (responsible authorities) oversee a workforce of about 140,000 registered practitioners.

As the auditor of all 18 responsible authorities, the Auditor-General provides independent assurance to Parliament and the public that the authorities are fairly reporting on their financial performance and, where applicable, their service performance. This report focuses on five of the larger responsible authorities.

This report is in four parts.

Part 1 sets out the aim and scope of this report.

Part 2 outlines the main roles and responsibilities of responsible authorities under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003. In particular, we discuss the responsible authorities’ role in responding to complaints and notifications,¹ and contributing to workforce planning.

Part 3 discusses recent findings from independent performance reviews of the responsible authorities. These reviews are managed by the Ministry of Health and carried out at least once every five years. There are 23 core standards for the responsible authorities to meet.² The results show that the five responsible authorities fully met 20 of the 23 core standards (over 87%), with the remainder partially met.

Part 4 discusses results from our audits. For 2022/23, we issued unmodified (“clean”) opinions in the audit reports for the five responsible authorities we look at in this report. We also analyse key trends in the responsible authorities’ financial statements to understand their financial position, including what they might be using their financial reserves for.

1: Under the Act, complaints are about conduct, and notifications are about competence and health (fitness) matters.

2: Ministry of Health (2020), “Core Performance Standards for Responsible Authorities: Consultation document”, page 12, at consult.health.govt.nz.