The Health and Social Care Act 2008 includes a wide range of provisions and includes some which put in place White Paper polices requiring primary legislation. These include:
- Changes to the duties of the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence.
- Requirement for Responsible Officers to feed in to medical revalidation.
- The creation of the Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator (OHPA), to adjudicate in General Medical Council and General Optical Council fitness to practise cases in the first instance.
- All Healthcare professional regulatory bodies to use the civil, rather than criminal, standard of proof.
- Responsible Officers to be nominated or appointed by healthcare organisations to work with the GMC to identify and handle cases of poor professional performance.
- The abolition of the Hearing Aid Council and provisions which enable the regulation of hearing aid dispensers in the private sector to transfer to a healthcare regulatory body.
- Provisions which will enable the regulation of pharmacists, pharmacy premises and pharmacy technicians to transfer to a new body.
The Act paves the way for further subordinate legislation to be made, including in relation to Responsible Officers, the OHPA, the regulation of Hearing Aid Dispensers in the private sector by the Health Professions Council, and the setting up of a new General Pharmacy Council to take over the regulatory duties of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB).