Hospitals

This bill makes it easier for Queenslanders to compare the quality of hospitals and aged care facilities by creating a public reporting framework. It also sets minimum staffing levels in public aged care homes and reforms how health complaints are handled between the Health Ombudsman and the national regulator AHPRA.

This bill reforms how health practitioners who treat other health practitioners handle mandatory reporting, and toughens penalties for people who pretend to be registered health professionals. It was agreed by all Australian health ministers through COAG and applies nationally, with Queensland as the host jurisdiction.

This bill makes a range of changes across five health-related Acts to improve healthcare access, strengthen patient safety, and update health legislation. Key reforms include allowing nurses and midwives to perform early medical terminations of pregnancy, counting newborns as separate patients for maternity ward staffing ratios, and enabling better sharing of patient safety information across Queensland Health.

This bill makes technical and protective amendments to the Mental Health Act 2016 before it starts on 5 March 2017. The key change stops statements made by a person during a court-ordered mental health assessment or examination from being used against them in civil or criminal proceedings, so patients can be frank with clinicians. The bill also tightens limits on detention, seclusion and restraint, fixes gaps affecting private mental health services, and makes small changes to the Public Health Act 2005 and Coroners Act 2003.

This bill amends eight health-related Acts to improve Queensland's health system. It strengthens protections for public health workers, modernises the Queensland Cancer Register to collect better data on cancer diagnosis and treatment, enables schools to share information with the children's vision screening program, and simplifies organ donation consent in private hospitals.

This bill makes wide-ranging amendments across Queensland's health laws to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equity, ban conversion therapy by health service providers, strengthen collaboration across the public health system, and update private hospital accreditation requirements. It also repeals the redundant Pap Smear Register and makes administrative changes to the Queensland Mental Health Commission.

This bill creates Queensland's voluntary assisted dying scheme, giving adults who are suffering from a terminal illness expected to cause death within 12 months the legal right to choose the timing and manner of their death. It establishes a rigorous process involving three requests and two independent medical assessments, with extensive safeguards to protect vulnerable people from coercion.

This bill decriminalises termination of pregnancy in Queensland by removing century-old Criminal Code offences and creating a new health-based legal framework. Based on 28 recommendations from the Queensland Law Reform Commission, it allows medical practitioners to perform terminations on request up to 22 weeks gestation, with clinical safeguards for later terminations. It also establishes safe access zones around clinics and protects women from criminal liability.

This bill does two things: it replaces Queensland's 1982 law for hospital foundations with a modern framework for how these charities support public hospitals, and it amends drug laws to let Queensland farmers grow low-THC hemp for food. The changes modernise foundation governance and open Queensland to the new national hemp food market starting 12 November 2017.

This bill creates Queensland's first laws regulating fertility clinics and assisted reproductive technology services. It introduces a licensing scheme for ART providers, establishes a central register of donor conception information, and gives donor-conceived people the right to find out who their biological donor is from age 16.

This bill strengthens Queensland's infection control rules for hospitals, dental practices, medical clinics and acupuncture clinics. It was prompted by a Brisbane dental clinic incident where substandard sterilisation exposed staff and patients to blood-borne diseases. The changes give Queensland Health faster and stronger powers to investigate, require improvements, or order a clinic to stop a service.

This bill protects the title 'surgeon' within the medical profession so that only doctors with significant specialist surgical training can use it. It responds to widespread consumer confusion in the cosmetic surgery industry, where any registered doctor could previously call themselves a 'cosmetic surgeon' regardless of their qualifications. The bill also clarifies tribunal powers when disciplining health practitioners.

This bill would have made the Health Ombudsman the independent auditor of Queensland public hospital waiting times. Each Hospital and Health Service would have had to send quarterly data on surgery, dental and specialist waits to the Ombudsman, who would then audit it and publish a public report. The bill failed at its second reading and did not become law.

This bill creates a no-fault insurance scheme that pays for lifetime treatment, care and support for people catastrophically injured in Queensland motor vehicle accidents, regardless of who caused the crash. It sets up a new agency and fund paid for by a levy on CTP insurance premiums, and applies to serious injuries suffered from 1 July 2016 onwards.

This bill completely replaces Queensland's Mental Health Act 2000 with a new framework for treating people with serious mental illness who cannot consent to their own treatment, and for dealing with people with a mental illness who are charged with serious crimes. It tightens the criteria for involuntary treatment, strengthens patient rights, limits the use of restraint and seclusion, and creates a new role - the chief psychiatrist - to oversee the system.

This bill restores the right for adult couples of any gender in Queensland to hold an official civil partnership ceremony before registering their relationship. It renames the Relationships Act back to the Civil Partnerships Act, sets up a new scheme for registering civil partnership notaries who can conduct ceremonies, and modernises the Births, Deaths and Marriages registry by moving to electronic lodgement of birth and death records.

This bill proposed to reform Queensland's abortion laws by setting clear rules on who can perform terminations, when abortions after 24 weeks are allowed, and by creating safe access zones around clinics. Introduced by independent MP Rob Pyne, the bill was withdrawn and did not become law.

This bill amends the Public Health Act 2005 to make Queensland hospitals and residential aged care facilities actively manage the risk of Legionella and other waterborne hazards in their water supplies. It was introduced after a 2013 Legionnaires' disease outbreak at The Wesley Hospital in Brisbane.

This bill makes a set of changes across health, research and criminal law. It equalises Queensland's age of consent at 16 for all sexual activity, gives GPs access to hospital records through a system called The Viewer, streamlines research use of patient data, lets schools share student details with immunisation and dental providers, and frees QIMR Berghofer to pay research bonuses up to $10 million a year without Cabinet approval.

This bill modernises the governance of Queensland's 13 hospital foundations and opens up the industrial hemp industry to food production. It repeals the outdated Hospitals Foundations Act 1982 and replaces it with contemporary legislation, while also amending the Drugs Misuse Act 1986 to allow hemp seeds to be grown and processed for human consumption.

This bill puts frontline clinicians onto Queensland's Hospital and Health Boards and strengthens enforcement against illegal vaping. It requires each hospital board to include at least one doctor, nurse, or allied health professional who works at that hospital, and it allows seized vaping goods to be immediately destroyed rather than stored for weeks in expensive, hazardous conditions.

This bill amends eight Queensland health Acts to fix implementation issues with the new fertility clinic regulatory framework, create a legal basis for organ donation procedures before circulatory death, require cosmetic surgery safety standards at private hospitals, and give the government broader powers to remove health board members. It is the third health legislation amendment bill for 2025.

This bill brings paramedics under Australia's national health registration scheme for the first time, meaning anyone calling themselves a paramedic must be registered and meet national standards. It also recognises nursing and midwifery as separate professions, gives regulators stronger powers to act quickly against practitioners who pose a public risk, and creates new offences (with fines up to $30,000) for deregistered practitioners who ignore prohibition orders.

This bill reforms the national system for regulating health practitioners in three key areas. It requires practitioners whose registration has been cancelled to go through a tribunal process before they can reapply, permanently publishes sexual misconduct findings on the public register, and creates new legal protections for people who report concerns about health practitioners.

This bill changes six Queensland health laws at once. Its main change is a new menu labelling scheme that requires large fast-food chains, cafe and bakery chains and supermarkets to show kilojoule information on their menus. It also lets health authorities publicly name unsafe food businesses, makes it easier to fill temporary vacancies on health boards, gives registered midwives direct access to the Pap Smear Register, and clarifies that cord blood can be donated to stem-cell registries.

This bill reforms how health practitioners can regain their registration after being struck off, increases transparency about practitioners found guilty of sexual misconduct, and strengthens protections for people who report concerns about health practitioners. It amends the national health practitioner law that applies across all Australian states and territories, with Queensland-specific modifications for the co-regulatory role of the Health Ombudsman.

This bill strengthens how Australia's health practitioner registration scheme protects the public. It makes public safety the paramount principle, creates new powers to stop unregistered people from providing health services, dramatically increases penalties for misleading health advertising, and embeds cultural safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as a guiding principle of the scheme.

This bill sought to remove abortion from Queensland's Criminal Code by repealing the three sections that made it a crime for women to end a pregnancy or for doctors to help them. The bill was withdrawn and did not become law.

This bill creates a legal pathway for seriously ill Queenslanders to be treated with medicinal cannabis, while keeping all other cannabis use illegal. Doctors can apply to Queensland Health for approval to prescribe medicinal cannabis to a specific patient, or, in future, prescribe as-of-right if they belong to a class of specialists listed in a regulation. Pharmacists need a dispensing approval to hand it out, and patients, carers and institutions have clear rules about how to store and use it.

This bill replaces Queensland's Industrial Relations Act 1999 with an entirely new framework governing work for the state's public service, local councils and Brisbane City Council. It sets new minimum employment conditions, makes collective bargaining the main way to negotiate pay and conditions, introduces paid domestic and family violence leave for the first time, and makes Easter Sunday a public holiday from 2017.

This bill makes wide-ranging amendments to Queensland's health legislation, with the most significant reforms to the Mental Health Act 2016. It strengthens the rights of people receiving mental health treatment by replacing 'best interests' tests with a rights-based approach, improves safeguards around electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), enables international patient transfers, and aligns confidentiality provisions across health agencies.

This bill puts minimum nurse-to-patient and midwife-to-patient ratios into Queensland law for the first time. It amends the Hospital and Health Boards Act 2011 so the government can legally require public hospitals to staff prescribed wards at set ratios, with the initial targets being 1 nurse or midwife for every 4 patients on day shifts and 1 for every 7 at night.