AUSTRALIA’S medical workforce is set for a major shake-up with government officials keen to expand the role of lower paid and less skilled workers while offering fresh incentives to lure doctors out of the city.
The high-level council that advises the nation’s health ministers has focused its attention on longstanding workforce challenges, following the Abbott government’s decision to axe Health Workforce Australia and declare the system will need to make better use of limited resources and personnel in future.
In a private meeting last month, the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council — made up of health department chiefs and other key figures — considered new reports from HWA and resolved to hold a strategic discussion on workforce reform in September.
According to minutes of the AHMAC meeting, attended by federal Health secretary Jane Halton and 10 other commonwealth officials, the strategic discussion will consider “levers to improve workforce distribution, especially general practitioners, (and further) workforce reform contributing to productivity”.
AHMAC also wants to involve the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency, the national registration body established by the former Labor government in 2010 to support 14 speciality boards.
Officials have already launched a review of the national registration scheme that will, in part, examine whether enough is being done to honour a 2008 intergovernmental agreement that promised “development of a flexible, responsible and sustainable workforce”.
The Australian offered federal Health Minister Peter Dutton an opportunity to expand on his previous calls for workforce reform but he declined.
In a speech to the GP Registrars Australia Conference in March, Mr Dutton spoke of the need for “a sustainable and increasingly efficient health workforce”.
In May, he went further, suggesting the government was working on a plan to ensure “a greater concentration of our doctors’ efforts on those with the most need”. “It will concentrate not just on remuneration, but on scope of practice and advanced payment models, including greater support from the private insurers,” Mr Dutton told The George Institute.
While the budget in May proposed a $7 co-payment for routine medical services, among several measures that reduce the government’s commitment to primary care, public hospitals and preventive health, the Coalition has yet to unveil any major system reforms.
HWA has noted the recent growth in medical graduates, which has prompted funding for more training places, but highlighted the uneven distribution of the workforce and an ongoing reliance on overseas-trained professionals. The agency has also criticised governments for their missed opportunities to better distribute locally-trained doctors.
Source: The Australian