AMA VICDOC Summer 2024 - Magazine - Page 65
D R DA N I E LL E M cM U L L EN — A M A P R ES ID E N T
A
fter a year of discussion papers
and countless workshops and
meetings, the final report of the
Scope of Practice Review was finally
released in early November. The 194-page
report contains 18 recommendations
ranging from sensible, small reforms
through to others I would politely refer
to as questionable. Titled Unleashing the
Potential of our Health Workforce, one
of our major frustrations with this review
from the start has been its title, and the
assumption that all regulation is bad —
that 'leashes' are just turf protection,
rather than patient protection. Above
all, there has been failure to answer the
question of who should hold the leash.
We firmly believe that decisions about
scope of practice and workforce should
be made by independent, expert bodies,
with robust processes — not politicians
with knee-jerk reactions.
The AMA recognised the potential
threats to patient care posed by the
review and was strongly engaged in the
review through three public submissions
and a confidential submission to the draft
final report. We also provided a detailed
literature review on the international
evidence on non-medical prescribing.
This showed autonomous prescribing
is not as prevalent or successful as
other stakeholders would have
you believe.
We met with the lead reviewer,
Professor Mark Cormack on many
occasions, including inviting him to an
AMA Federal Council meeting. We also
discussed the review regularly with the
GP colleges and other groups to ensure
alignment in our positions.
In discussions with the Federal
Government and the Department of Health
and Aged Care, we have explained the risks
with many of these recommendations,
such as fragmented care. Sometimes I
feel like a broken record in these meetings
explaining that we need to invest in and
support general practice, not eternally
fund programs that only circumvent
general practice, inevitably cost more,
and are less efficient. We will continue
to press this message.
I won’t detail all 18 recommendations,
but I want to highlight a few that we are
particularly concerned about and will
continue to advocate against.
Recommendation 3 is to amend the
Health Practitioner National Law to grant
health ministers the power to give Ahpra
and National Boards even greater policy
direction on registration and accreditation
functions. We strongly oppose this on
the principle that the regulation of
health professionals exists to protect
the community and ensure the highest
standards of care for patients, and this
is not something that politicians should
be meddling in.
As we repeatedly highlighted in our
submission, Australia has processes
for reforms to scope of practice that
are independent and consultative.
The problem is these are regularly
overridden by state and territory
health ministers.
This leads to the absurd situation
where scope of practice is now
determined by political promises
during election campaigns rather than
independent bodies with expertise in
relevant skills and standards.
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