The surveys were undertaken as part of our initiative to educate health professionals about how competition and consumer laws apply to them.
“With some practical and targeted guidance in place our aim is to help health professionals understand their rights and obligations under competition and consumer laws,” said Commerce Commission Associate Commissioner Elisabeth Welson.
“They will then be better placed to compete within the law and to take advantage of any business opportunities that may be available,” she said.
Survey results showed that the majority of respondents were aware of the Commerce Commission’s role and the laws that we enforce. However, few reported that they were confident about how the laws applied to them.
Respondents were more confident about how to comply with consumer law than competition law, for example when offering credit terms to patients and when advertising their services or describing treatment options to patients.
Many professionals were able to identify different types of anti-competitive behaviour from a list. Behaviour that was harder to recognise included agreements about prices between competitors who were proposing to merge, or an association taking disciplinary action against a practitioner for charging too little.
“The information and insights gained from these surveys has been very valuable and will help focus our education programme for health professionals,” said Ms Welson.
The guidance under development will include fact sheets on rosters, setting your fees safely, advertising, offering credit terms to patients, and the obligations of professional health associations.
If you have questions that you think should be addressed in the Commission’s guidance or want to find out more about the Commission’s education programme, please email health@comcom.govt.nz
