Contacting The Privy Council: GCC Moving The Goalposts

June 19, 2009 at 1:43 pm (Alternative Medicine, Chiropractic) (Chiropractic, Chiropractors, GCC, General Chiropractic Council, Privy Council)

Here is my letter to the Privy Council regarding the GCC’s attempt to waive the rules:

Dear Sirs / Mesdames,

I am writing to you with regard to the news that the General Chiropractic Council is asking the Privy Council to expedite a Section 60 Order “to achieve the following changes that GCC identified some time ago for inclusion in an anticipated portmanteau Order spanning necessary changes for all the healthcare regulators“. These changes being: “raising the referral threshold for the IC from ‘case to answer’ to ‘realistic prospect of success’” and “providing powers for the consensual disposal of complaints by the IC in cases where referral to the PCC is not required in the public interest“.

I wish to register my concern that the GCC is attempting to have the rules changed to alter the threshold to ‘realistic prospect of success’ and to allow the GCC to dismiss complaints without consideration.

I would be concerned if the GCC were able to raise the referral threshold to ‘realistic prospect of success’, partly because I am unsure who would define this ‘realistic prospect of success’. I am also worried that the GCC would be able to decide on whether referral to the PCC was ‘in the public interest’. Other definitions that the GCC have provided in the past lead me to wonder how meaningful these definitions would be.

To provide one example:

The definition of evidence-based care that has been published by the GCC is as follows
“clinical practice that incorporates the best available evidence from research, the preferences of the patient and the expertise of practitioners including the individual chiropractor her/himself”.

This definition, at first sight, would appear to be meaningful. However, the GCC’s acceptance of therapies and diagnostic methods that are clearly not evidence-based (and do not, by any stretch of the imagination, incorporate the best available evidence from research) render this claim to provide evidence-based care completely meaningless in my view:

Adjustment of the atlas, craniosacral therapy and applied kinesiology all fall within the above definition of evidence-based care.

Yours faithfully,
James Cole.

The quotes in my email are from the GCC’s response to Action for Victims of Chiropractic, which I wrote about here. I’ve concentrated on their ability to provide accurate and meaningful definitions. Others may wish to concentrate on their poor governance of the profession.

[Hat tip: BobP]