Health Professions Review Board Overturned

Recently, the BCSC overturned a decision from the Health Professions Review Board which had interfered with disposition from the Inquiry Committee for the CDSBC. The Board had concluded that the investigation into a complaint was inadequate and the disposition was unreasonable. The complaint involved an allegation of incompetence arising out of only one negligent error made by a dentist. The IC's view was that one mistake did not establish that the dentist was incompetent. It conducted a review of several other files where the patients had been properly treated. Therefore it decided that there was no pattern of incompetence. The Review Board determined that one incident could indeed form the basis of an incompetency finding and sent the matter back to the IC with specific direction that action had to be taken against the registrant even if there was only one error. The decision contains a lengthy analysis of when a reviewing court will intervene, but the bottom line was that the Review Board's decision was overturned because it was patently unreasonable. The Review Board applied the wrong standard of review when it considered the College's interpretation of the Health Professions Act and when it assessed the evidence before it (the standard is reasonableness). It had applied its own assessment of the evidence instead of asking whether the IC's assessment was reasonable. In short, the Review Board failed to extend deference to the IC's decision. College of Dental Surgeons of B.C. v. Health Professions Review Board, et al 2014 BCSC 1841