The Department of Health has recently agreed an interim Memorandum of Understanding with the United Kingdom’s General Chiropractic Council (GCC).
 
If the Health Care Professionals Bill, which passed the clauses stage in the House of Keys last week, becomes law, the Department will rely on the GCC to help it with regulating Chiropractors in the Isle of Man and the Council will in turn be looking to the Department to keep it appraised of any issues which might arise involving Chiropractors on the Island.
 
Under the Bill Chiropractors working on the Island will be required to be registered with the GCC in order to practise here.
 
In February representatives from the GCC visited the Island to meet Department officials and local Chiropractors to discuss the implications of the forthcoming Bill.  Following the meeting, Mr David Howell C.B. OBE, Chief Executive and Registrar of the GCC said: “On behalf of the General Chiropractic Council, I am pleased to be able to sign this interim Memorandum of Understanding. I thank the Department of Health for facilitating what I hope will be the first of many successful meetings with Chiropractors on the Isle of Man.  The GCC fully supports the Health Care Professionals Bill and I look forward to developing and maintaining an effective partnership between the Council and the Department of Health in the Isle of Man, which will help to both protect members of the public from practitioners who may be operating on the Island without being properly regulated, and to support those practitioners on the Island who are fully registered with the GCC.”
 
Minister for Health, Hon Howard Quayle MHK, said: “The Department was pleased to sign this interim Memorandum of Understanding with the GCC.  It is important that we continue to build and strengthen relationships with professional and regulatory bodies in the UK, upon which we rely for the registration of numerous healthcare professionals.”
 
Former Member for the Department of Health, Bill Henderson MHK, who has taken the Health Care Professionals Bill through the House of Keys, said: “The signing of interim memorandums of understanding with the GCC and previously with the General Osteopathic Council (GOsC), are strong, positive steps in strengthening the relationship between the Department and UK regulatory bodies. The Department is now much closer to bringing in the regulation of additional health care professionals and for the first time professions such as Chiropractors and Osteopaths will be brought under Isle of Man statute and regulation. Something which I have personally been working towards for some considerable time.”