National Registration Board proposed
The Commonwealth Productivity Commission today released its report on Australia's Health Workforce, including recommendations that national systems of course accreditation and practitioner registration be established, to replace the existing State based systems.According to the report, "Australia is experiencing workforce shortages across a number of health professions despite a significant and growing reliance on overseas trained health workers. The shortages are even more acute in rural and remote areas and in certain special needs sectors. With developing technology, growing community expectations and population ageing, the demand for health workforce services will increase while the labour market will tighten. New models of care will also be required."
The Productivity Commission wants to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the available health workforce, and to improve its distribution. They state that their objectives are to develop a more sustainable and responsive health workforce, while maintaining a commitment to high quality and safe health outcomes.
With this in mind, they have proposed a set of national workforce structures which they believe are designed to:
> support local innovations, and objectively evaluate, facilitate and drive those of national significance through an advisory health workforce improvement agency;
> promote more responsive health education and training arrangements through: the creation of an independent advisory council; and a high-level taskforce to achieve greater transparency (and appropriate contestability) of funding for clinical training;
> integrate the current profession-based accreditation of health education and training through an over-arching national accreditation board that could, initially at least, delegate functions to appropriate existing entities, based on their capacity to contribute to the objectives of the new accreditation regime;
> provide for national registration standards for health professions and for the creation of a national registration board with supporting professional panels; and
> improve funding-related incentives for workforce change through: the transparent assessment by an independent committee of proposals to extend MBS coverage beyond the medical profession; the introduction of (discounted) MBS rebates for a wider range of delegated services; and addressing distortions in rebate relativities.
> support local innovations, and objectively evaluate, facilitate and drive those of national significance through an advisory health workforce improvement agency;
> promote more responsive health education and training arrangements through: the creation of an independent advisory council; and a high-level taskforce to achieve greater transparency (and appropriate contestability) of funding for clinical training;
> integrate the current profession-based accreditation of health education and training through an over-arching national accreditation board that could, initially at least, delegate functions to appropriate existing entities, based on their capacity to contribute to the objectives of the new accreditation regime;
> provide for national registration standards for health professions and for the creation of a national registration board with supporting professional panels; and
> improve funding-related incentives for workforce change through: the transparent assessment by an independent committee of proposals to extend MBS coverage beyond the medical profession; the introduction of (discounted) MBS rebates for a wider range of delegated services; and addressing distortions in rebate relativities.
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