NEWCASTLE MP Tim Crakanthorp is "gravely concerned" about the lack of public transparency when health practitioners do wrong after Newcastle chemist Nicholas Bakarich failed to disclose serious assaults on his record, including punching a woman, when he asked for Mr Crakanthorp's support in 2015 to expand his methadone services.
Mr Crakanthorp was unaware the 2015 letter was used by Bakarich in a recent NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal hearing until a Newcastle Herald article on Saturday that included details of two serious assaults by Bakarich against three people in separate incidents in 2014 and 2016.
Mr Crakanthorp had no knowledge of the assaults.
Bakarich was found guilty of professional misconduct and his registration was cancelled on Friday after the tribunal found he did not report the assaults to regulators as required, and was at risk of "snapping" and acting aggressively again if confronted by an aggressive or demanding methadone patient.
Mr Crakanthorp said details of Bakarich's crimes against three people, including punching a woman in the face in 2014 who tried to intervene while Bakarich was kicking and punching a man on the ground, were sickening and appalling.
Mr Crakanthorp's September, 2015 letter, tendered to the tribunal by Bakarich, was restricted to supporting Bakarich's application to increase the maximum number of 50 patients he could treat for their opioid dependency. Bakarich did not make a mandatory report to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency after he was found guilty of the first assaults in January, 2015, so the limited public transparency avenue was not enacted.
"I would never have written a letter of support for someone under those circumstances if I'd known. Of course I wouldn't," Mr Crakanthorp said.
"If I'd known about the assaults I wouldn't have had anything to do with it. To assault someone who had punched anyone in the face, let alone a woman, and was kicking someone while they were on the ground, of course I wouldn't have supported him if I'd known.
"You think you're supporting someone with something that's actually doing good in the community in terms of helping people off drugs, yet here I've found myself being used without my consent in a court process."
Mr Crakanthorp said he was also gravely concerned about the broader issue of the lack of transparency and public accountability about health practitioners and their complaint histories that the Bakarich experience revealed. It showed how much of the health system relies on the public having to trust doctors, Mr Crakanthorp said.
"I'm like everyone else in that when I go to a doctor I trust them, but what we need is a system that clearly provides information on health practitioners and that is publicly available," he said.
The recent case of Hunter eye specialist Eugene Hollenbach and the lack of public knowledge about investigations against him until he was found guilty of professional misconduct in August showed a system that was failing the public, Mr Crakanthorp said.
"You look at that case and the women with pelvic mesh and it beggars belief that we still have a system where we know so little about health practitioners, and no way of finding the kind of information we need about them," he said.
"The Minister for Health needs to address this issue with some urgency because too much of the health system relies on trust and as we've seen with recent cases, that trust can at times not be in the public interest."
