“If the Victoria government has the real health and welfare of its citizens at heart, it would pull out of AHPRA and reinstate the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria, ” Dr Arnold said.
“National registration was never necessary and likely to be worse for in terms of protecting public health and safety,” he said.
“State boards could have instead reached agreents on registration fees for doctors in state-border regions, and kept a shared register of miscreant practitioners.”
Mr Davis said: “When AHPRA was formed in 2010, Victoria’s doctors saw their annual registration fees jump from $415 to $650. A number of services within the Victoria syst, such as a program to support impaired and potentially-impaired doctors, have not been replaced in the national arrangents.”
A key argument in the case for national registration of health-care practitioners was that where registration was cancelled in one state or territory it had not been made known to authorities in other jurisdictions. That was argued to be particularly the case where practitioners were in locations close to borders between jurisdiction and could (and did) regularly ‘border hop’.
With national registration, that has been eliminated as those 14 health-care practitioner groups whose mbers are registered by and come under the governance of one of AHPRA’s registration boards can now practise anywhere in Australia.
A major concern that has been expressed among the 14 groups is the substantial increase in registration fees with seingly little in return, not to mention increased requirents in regard to continuing professional development (considered onerous by some), as well as a number of checks on practitioners’ backgrounds, including any criminal matter.The CPD requirents have been the cause of most concern – not only the need to gain CPD points in order to maintain registration, but particularly in regard to the costs involved in, say, attending a national or state congresses, including registration fees, travel and accommodation costs, and time away from practices.
