Vision
Promoting Fair, Responsive and Accountable Administrative Decision Making in British Columbia.
Mission
The Mission of the Hospital Appeal Board (HAB) is to provide medical practitioners with reasonable access to a timely and responsive process for reviewing determinations regarding permits to practice in a hospital that results in fair and impartial appeal decisions.
Mandate
The Hospital Appeal Board is an independent, specialized, quasi-judicial administrative appeal tribunal.
Originally established as the Medical Appeal Board in 1973, the HAB hears practitioner appeals from hospital board of management decisions affecting hospital privileges. Its mandate is described in s. 46(1) of the Hospital Act as being:
“[f]or the purpose of providing practitioners appeals from
- a decision of a board of management that modifies, refuses, suspends, revokes or fails to renew a practitioner’s permit to practice in a hospital, or
- the failure or refusal of a board of management to consider and decide on an application for a permit.”
The suspension, revocation and failure to renew hospital privileges results in tensions between a practitioner’s desire for maximum access to public hospitals, the hospital’s need to exercise control over the number of practitioners and their practice standards, and the public’s interests in an efficient and high quality health care service. The HAB’s mandate is to ensure that hospitals balance these conflicting interests fairly and responsibly.
The HAB consists of 10 members appointed by the Attorney General. Its composition (six members that the Attorney General considers suitable, plus four members appointed from nominations made by the Doctors of BC, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the College of Dental Surgeons and the BC College of Nurses and Midwives) reflects the interests of both government and the affected professional associations in ensuring a credible and independent appeal body.