Health Minister Eric Hoskins announced Friday the government will introduce legislative amendments to improve regulatory bodies' handling of sexual abuse of patients by health professionals, including doctors and nurses.

The announcement comes after a searing report that criticized how the regulatory bodies, such as the College and Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), have dealt with health-care professionals who've sexually assaulted patients.

The report found that the regulatory bodies have allowed health professionals to continue practicing after finding sexual abuse had occurred and restrictions placed on their practice — such as only seeing patients of one gender — were poorly enforced.

The report's release was held up over concerns it might defame the regulatory bodies, the Toronto Star reported.

The government is adopting some, but not all, of the 34 recommendations from the report, written by Marilou McPhedran and Sheila Macdonald. The central recommendations, to take away the ability of regulatory bodies to handle sexual-assault complaints and create a separate body for those cases, was not adopted by the government, according to a press release.

The changes include broadening the types of sexual abuse that will result in the mandatory revocation of a health professional's license and not letting health professionals continue practicing on patients of one gender after an allegation or finding of sexual abuse.

There will also be measures geared at improving the transparency of the process, providing therapy and counselling for complainants, and increasing fines for health professionals and organizations that fail to report a suspected case of patient sexual abuse to a college.

The report included in-depth information about the relative lack of power a victim of a sexual assault has in the complaint process. It recommended that victims be assigned lawyers, paid for by the colleges, to represent their interests throughout the process.

That recommendation was also not adopted. Instead, the government will begin work next winter to "identify more ways for patients to participate in the complaints, investigation and discipline processes at health regulatory colleges."

The province is running a limited pilot project with a similar goal, that gives some victims of sexual assault access to free legal advice.

The changes are going to be part of the Patients First Action Plan, and a major piece of its legislation, the Patients First Act, is set to be re-introduced after the session begins.

Major health-care legislation to be amended to improve handling of patient sexual assaults

Read this for free.