Hon Stephen Robertson MP

Member for Stretton

On the 17th October 2008 The Minister for Health in the Queensland Government sent a letter to all colleagues to introduce the proposed legislation for the first stage of implementation of the new National Registration and Accreditation Scheme for the Health Professions.

'Australian Health Ministers have agreed that I should provide to you a copy of the first Bill for your information prior to it's introduction into Queensland Parliament'.

The Health Practitioner Regulation (Administrative Arrangements) National Law Bill (the National Law Bill) can be downloaded in full below. For ease of reference however, a summary of the key points is outlined here;

The Health Practitioner Regulation (Administrative Arrangements) National Law Bill has been drafted to encompass the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) signed by COAG in March 2008, and includes the following provisions in response to key matters raised in consultations.

(a) Roles of boards and agency.

The proposed legislation clarifies that the National Agency can only perform a statutory function of a National Board when that function is formally delegated to the agency by the board. Clause 46 (Delegation of functions) provides that a National Board may delegate any of its functions to the National Agency.

(b) Accreditation functions.

The proposed legislation makes it clear that the body to which the accreditation function is assigned may develop the accreditation standards for the profession and then submit the standards to the Board. The body is to ensure wide-ranging consultation with respect to the content of the standards, to ensure the consultation process is rigorous, open, transparent and fair. These provisions can be found at Clause 9 (Special arrangements relating to accreditation). The proposed legislation also provides that a health profession standard (including accreditation standards) may be approved by the Ministerial Council only if it is recommended to it by the National Board (Clause 8). The proposed legislation also provides for funding for accreditation functions to be included in a board’s budget (Clause 21).

(c) Fees, funding and the boards.

The proposed National Law Bill contains several new elements which build on the basic IGA provision in relation to fees. First, there is to be a health profession agreement between the agency and each national board, covering fees, an annual budget for the board (including funding for the accreditation function), and the services to be provided to the board by the agency (Clause 21). There are also provisions that require that the National Agency (Clause 20(1)(d)) and the National Boards (Clause 42(1)(b)) negotiate in good faith and attempt to come to an agreement on the terms of the health profession agreement for each National Board.

(d) Annual reporting and the boards.

The proposed legislation requires that the annual report compiled by the National Agency include a financial statement for each National Board (Clause 35). There is also a requirement that the annual report contain information provided by the boards on their performance of their functions and a statement of income and expenditure for each board (Clause 36, Reporting by national boards).

(e) Public process for nominations to the Agency Management Committee.

The proposed legislation requires that, before the Ministerial Council appoints any member of the Agency Management Committee, that the vacancy or vacancies are to be publicly advertised (Clause 25, Vacancies to be advertised).

(f) Naming of the boards.

The new national boards will be named in the form: Chiropractic Board of Australia. Full details are to be found at Clause 37 (Establishment of national boards).

The second consultation paper relating to the key policy issues for consideration in the development of the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme's second piece of legislation is now available for comment.

Proposed arrangements for handling complaints, and dealing with performance, health and conduct matters

The complete consultation paper is available on the project website (CLICK HERE) and comments will be recieved by the National Implementation Team up to Close of Business 17th November 2008.

Mr Bruce Menzies, President ADPAQ, attended the forum held in Sydney on the 21st October 2008, and we were therefore able to put our perspective to a large audience.

As an attendee at the National Registration and Accreditation Implementation Project State Forum on 12 August 2008, ADPAQ have become stakeholders in the consultation process, hence we are entitled to read and respond to all the policies that will be implemented during the project.

The first of the consultation papers foreshadowed in the Ministerial Statement issued by Health Ministers on the 4 September 2008, is detailed below and the ADPAQ invite all members to keep informed of the process and consider this the first of many papers.

The paper outlines proposed approaches and options in relation to the planned registration arrangements under the Scheme. Feedback regarding this paper and subsequent papers around additional areas such as accreditation arrangements; complaints handling, investigations, review, and management of impaired practitioners; privacy and information sharing etc will inform the development of the second piece of legislation relevant to the Scheme to be passed in September 2009.

The ADPAQ are happy to comment on these papers as they pertain to the professional lives of Dental Prosthetists and would be interested in any views members have pertaining to the below documents.

The Council of Australian Governments decided that the nine health occupations that currently have statutory registration requirements in each state and territory will be the first to be included in the national registration and accreditation scheme for the health professions. These health occupations are nursing and midwifery, medicine, physiotherapy, psychology, optometry, chiropractic care, dental care (including dentists, dental hygienists, dental therapists and dental prosthetists), osteopathy and pharmacy. Health ministers agreed that podiatry will also be included in the scheme as soon as practicable.

Health ministers will consider other partially regulated health occupations for inclusion in the scheme. The Practitioner Regulation Subcommittee, a joint Commonwealth/State/Territory committee, will assess the partially regulated health occupations against criteria set by the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council (AHMAC):
The professiona that is of interest to us in of course

Dental Technicians

Both the ACDLA and the ADPA submitted their draft papers to CORA and at their recent meeting these submissions were amalgamated to form the draft submission that is available below. Only submissions that address the AHMAC criteria will be considered.

The National Registration and Accreditation Implementation Team held a state forum to give an overview of the processes they are working through to establish the National Registration platform.

Attending this forum on behalf of the ADPAQ were Bruce Menzies, President and Mrs Dimitti Huxley, CEO.

The full presentation is available for download below as is the documents that were produced by the many participants that listed the concerns of the many diverse groups that will be moving to the National registration process.

The New Scheme indicating the various levels of the organisation and the way they interact with each other is within the presentation but essentially there will be an overarching Ministerial Council that will oversee the National Boards, an Advisory Council and an Administrative Arm.

The National Boards will each have a National Committee and individual State/Territory Committees which will enable local concerns to be resolved with a local perspective.

An agreement made on the twenty sixth day of March 2008, between

The Commonwealth of Australia;

The State of New South Wales;

The State of Victoria;

The State of Queensland;

The State of Western Australia;

The State of South Australia;

The State of Tasmania;

The Australian Capital Territory; and.

The Northern Territory of Australia.

with the objective to..

establish a single national registration and accreditation scheme for health professionals, beginning with the nine professions currently registered in all jurisdictions. That is, physiotherapy, optometry, nursing and midwifery, chiropractic care, pharmacy, dental care (dentists, dental hygienists, dental prosthetists and dental therapists), medicine, psychology and osteopathy.

As agreed by COAG on 26 March 2008, all professionals in these nine groups will be covered by the national scheme as of 1 July 2010.

The objectives of the national scheme, to be set out in the legislation, are to:
(a) provide for the protection of the public by ensuring that only practitioners who are suitably trained and qualified to practise in a competent and ethical manner are registered;
(b) facilitate workforce mobility across Australia and reduce red tape for practitioners;
(c) facilitate the provision of high quality education and training and rigorous and responsive assessment of overseas-trained practitioners;
(d) have regard to the public interest in promoting access to health services; and
(e) have regard to the need to enable the continuous development of a flexible, responsive and sustainable Australian health workforce and enable innovation in education and service delivery.

The scheme will operate under the following principles, to be set out in the legislation:
(a) it should operate in a transparent, accountable, efficient, effective and fair manner;
(b) it should ensure that fees and charges are reasonable; and
(c) it should recognise that restrictions on the practice of a profession should only occur where the benefits of the restriction to the community as a whole outweigh the costs.

The legislation will provide that all bodies within the scheme will have regard to the objectives of the national scheme.

The Parties to this Agreement confirm that they do not intend the proposed national registration and accreditation scheme to have any role in regulating employment conditions, rates of pay or other employment matters with regard to the health professions proposed to be regulated.

The Parties to this Agreement further confirm that they do not intend the proposed national registration and accreditation scheme to have any role in relation to resourcing, management or governance of State and Territory health institutions.

To read the full communique click here to be referred to the COAG website.