Surely in most companies if a “serious” complaint had been made about the chairman of a company he would step down pending the completion of the investigation. The chairman would most definitely not be saying “we will investigate every complaint”
Many complaints have been made about GCC management and to my knowledge nobody has ever been censored. Fortunately the GCC has its own way of dealing with complaints regarding the chairman and council members this process must give him the confidence to say “we will investigate every complaint in line with our statutory requirements”
Of course 600 complaints is going to take a long time and cost a lot of money. Normally in these situations big companies with their backs against the wall drag the cases out for as long as possible hoping the plaintiff will loose interest and motivation to pursue their complaint. In the “Cat Hair on the floor” case the GCC “secret police” were able to dragg the case out for four years trying to gather some credible evidence to present about Bridgit to the Professional Conduct Committee, no doubt they can also drag it out when they dont want to look at the evidence.
To draw this process out the GCC had the Chiropractic Act amended so the chiropractors being investigated would continue to pay their registration fees, this came into power yesterday. The GCC could not have continued without the £600,000 provided by these chiropractors, this must be what is meant by turkeys paying for Christmas.
When I did the blog in June explaining why I felt these complaints would not see the light of day I saw what I estimated then at £500,000 as the biggest obstacle, this has been overcome so
what next? I predict normal GCC due process “Smoke and mirrors”.
The GCC does not have the money to investigate 600 complaints. Amending the Chiropractic Act give the GCC time to stall and unless they put up registration fees, they can not process these complaints. If you look at the GCCs financial statement for 2008 their total income was £2,708,833 an increase of £88,403 from the previous year. The costs for the normal complaints (approx 40) that came before the GCC were £1,042,033 now they have 600 on top of the normal. This amount can not be covered by new registrants or cash reserves, I suppose they could do a Northern Rock and ask the Government to bail them out. Margaret Coats does on occasions act like God, perhaps we at last going to see evidence that the miracle of the loaves and fishes did actually happen.
Business as usual
Declares GCC Chairman Peter Dixon
There are a variety of important issues covered in this newsletter relevant to chiropractors and patient welfare. I suspect, though, that the subject many will want to read about is one that the GCC is unable to comment upon in any detail – the complaints about almost 600 chiropractors we’ve recently received. This compares with the average of 40 or so complaints we usually receive a year.
What I can say is that we will investigate every complaint in line with our statutory requirements, and the chiropractors have been told that we won’t be starting the investigating process until we’ve recruited sufficient staff to cope with this unusual situation. In the meantime, it’s ‘business as usual’.
