Hastwell v Health Care Complaints Commission [2021] NSWCA 22 (on Caselaw) is of interest as an appellate consideration of an application for judicial review of an HCCC decision not to take further steps in a complaint against a psychiatrist arising from his conclusion in an expert opinion report of a delusional disorder .
In refusing leave to appeal, the Court said (per Leeming JA):
[87] … the legal requirements of expert opinion evidence applicable to proceedings in a court do not fall within the complaints handling regime established by the Act. Medico-legal reports which do not, in some or indeed all respects, comply with the obligations of expert evidence, are produced every day, and are commonly the subject of objection and rejection by courts when sought to be tendered. There is nothing in the scheme of the Act to suggest that the legal questions of admissibility have any bearing upon the processes, which are to be exercised with the protection of the health and safety of the public as the paramount consideration.
[91] …But let it be assumed, favourably to Mr Hastwell, that a psychiatrist should not have diagnosed Delusional Disorder. Merely because a medical practitioner makes an incorrect diagnosis does not without more mean that it is not open to the HCCC to decline to deal with a complaint. The nature of medico-legal reports is that not uncommonly different practitioners reach different diagnoses in respect of the same patient.