March 2024

In this month's issue:

• Medical Board of Australia news
  • New pathway to registration coming for specialist international medical graduates
  • CPD – what you need to do in 2024
  • Latest registration data published
  • Accreditation: providing high-quality education and training
• Consultations
  • Have your say on the role of consumers in accreditation
• News and alerts
  • Medicinal cannabis – balancing access and safety
  • Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Statement of Intent
  • Holiday payments for doctors who worked for a New Zealand District Health Board
• Medical regulation at work
  • Latest tribunal decisions published
• Contacting the Board

Medical Board of Australia news

New pathway to registration coming for specialist international medical graduates

Work is underway to get more medical specialists into practice and providing care to patients in Australia.

National Cabinet has set an ambitious timeline for the Medical Board to use regulation to help strengthen Australia’s health workforce, with a specific request to set up a new, faster pathway to registration for some specialist international medical graduates (SIMGs).

The goal is to increase workforce flexibility while ensuring safe practice.

We will be working with specialist medical colleges to design the new pathway, determine the qualifications which will be the gateway to SIMG eligibility for the expedited pathway, and on related registration standards and guidelines.

Government (through the Health Workforce Taskforce) has earmarked anaesthesia, general practice, obstetrics and gynaecology and psychiatry as the top workforce priorities.

While the Board and Ahpra are starting with general practice, with large numbers of SIMGs and significant unmet community demand for care, we will also be working with the other priority specialties concurrently.

We have started working with both GP colleges to identify international qualifications in their specialty that may be appropriate for an expedited pathway.

We will work closely and consult with all specialist colleges on the elements of the new pathway that span the profession.

The new, expedited pathway for doctors with eligible qualifications will sit alongside the existing pathway to specialist registration, which will remain in place for SIMGs not eligible for the expedited pathway.

We aim to have the new expedited pathway in place before the end of the 2024 calendar year, subject to health ministers’ approval of a new registration standard, progressively building a bank of qualifications eligible for this new pathway.

Setting up the new pathway is a key plank in work by the Board and Ahpra to implement relevant recommendations flowing from the Overseas Health Practitioner Regulatory Settings Review - Final Report, 2023 by Ms Robyn Kruk AO (the Kruk Review).

A steering committee and a Specialist IMG Pathways Review Advisory Group will advise the Board in the months ahead, as we work with colleges to get more specialists providing medical care to patients in Australia.

The Advisory Group will be informed by the specialist medical colleges, employers and other stakeholders.

CPD – what you need to do in 2024

Quick reminder – all doctors need to have a CPD home before starting their 2024 CPD (unless they are exempt). Links to the accredited CPD homes are on the Board’s CPD page.

CPD exemptions apply to interns (PGY1), PGY2 doctors in a supervised position in a hospital or general practice and doctors with non-practising registration.

CPD homes can grant short term exemptions – between 6-12 months – due to illness, parental leave, etc. Doctors must apply to their CPD home to be granted an exemption.

CPD for PGY2 doctors

Confused about CPD requirements for PGY2 doctors?

• All PGY2s need to be in a CPD home for any part of the calendar year they are not in a supervised position (in a hospital or general practice).
• PGY2s not in a supervised position (in a hospital or general practice) for any part of the year need to meet the full annual CPD requirements (50 hours across three categories).
• CPD homes are likely to accept CPD done by PGY2s while in their supervised position, logging it and counting it towards the PGY2 doctor’s overall CPD requirements, when there is supporting evidence.
• When the PGY2 doctor is not supervised, CPD homes can provide support and guidance about CPD requirements.

Latest registration data published

The Board publishes data each quarter on the medical profession. Data are broken down by state and territory and registration type, and for specialists by specialty and field of specialty practice. Visit our Statistics page to view the latest report.

Accreditation: providing high-quality education and training

The Board has approved the following:

Medical school programs of study

Specialist medical college programs of study

Intern training accreditation authority

Consultations

Have your say on the role of consumers in accreditation

The Ahpra Accreditation Committee invites feedback on its draft proposed principles to strengthen the involvement of consumers in accreditation.

The committee is developing the principles to ensure meaningful involvement of consumers in accreditation activities in the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme. The aim is to support diversity of input into accreditation functions and enable responsive and person-centred processes that value and respect the views of consumers

The consultation is open until 18 April 2024. Find out more about this consultation and provide feedback on the Accreditation Committee’s current consultations webpage.

News and alerts

Medicinal cannabis – balancing access and safety

Since 2016, more than one million patients in Australia have been prescribed medicinal cannabis – up from 18,000 five years ago.

The number of prescribers accessing the Authorised Prescriber and the Special Access Scheme has also increased dramatically – with more than 5,700 medical practitioners and nurse practitioners now prescribing and dispensing medicinal cannabis products that have not been evaluated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for safety, quality, or efficacy.

The rapid rise in the number of prescriptions comes with the emergence of telehealth, online prescribing and direct-to-consumer health services.

Despite the rapid rise in medicinal cannabis use, complaints about the health, performance and conduct of practitioners prescribing, dispensing, and compounding the products is relatively low to date.

Since 1 July 2019, Ahpra and its co-regulator in Queensland (excluding NSW) have now received 288 notifications about 220 practitioners relating to the prescribing or dispensing of medicinal cannabis – or around 0.6 per cent of all notifications received by Ahpra.

Most concerns raised by patients relate to access to medication, fees and costs, and being prescribed lower doses than they have requested. After investigation, a small number of notifications have required regulatory action, with cautions or conditions imposed on practitioners in 12 cases.

Different regulatory agencies in Australia are responsible for overseeing the medicines themselves, the health professionals who prescribe and provide them, and the premises where they are stored and dispensed.

In such a rapidly changing field, ensuring clarity of roles, clear information flows and the use of regulatory tools to reduce potential harms to the public is critical.

So, in February, Ahpra brought Australia’s health regulators together to share information and regulatory intelligence, discuss any current risks to the public and collaborate effectively.

Read the communiqué about the meeting on the Ahpra website.

Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Statement of Intent

The Ahpra Accreditation Committee has published its Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Statement of Intent. The statement of intent aims to embed interprofessional collaborative practice across the continuum of healthcare settings.

The statement is a fundamental step towards achieving effective team-based and coordinated care across Australia. It is a commitment to improving the outcomes for patients and consumers by reducing the risk of fragmented and uncoordinated care.

Interprofessional collaborative practice is healthcare practice where multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds work together and with patients, families, carers and communities to deliver the highest quality of care that is free of racism and other forms of discrimination.

The statement represents a joint commitment from 53 stakeholders across the health and education sectors to take action.

Read more in the news item.

Holiday payments for doctors who worked for a New Zealand District Health Board

Medical practitioners who worked in New Zealand after 2010 may be owed payments under NZ’s holidays legislation.

If you’re a doctor who worked for one of NZ’s former District Health Boards after 1 May 2010, you can register now on the national portal for former employees.

The first payments to former employees will start this year.

More information is available on the Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora website.

Medical regulation at work

Latest tribunal decisions published

There are important lessons in tribunal decisions about registered medical practitioners. The Medical Board of Australia refers the most serious concerns about medical practitioners to tribunals in each state and territory. Here are the recently published decisions:

• a Victorian GP has been disqualified from applying for registration until 2028 for providing sub-standard care over more than a decade (Medical Board of Australia v Kemp)
• a former doctor from Victoria has been disqualified from seeking registration for a further year for inappropriate contact with a patient’s guardian (Medical Board of Australia v Datta)
• a West Australian specialist gynaecological oncologist has been reprimanded for poor record-keeping and failure to obtain informed consent (Medical Board of Australia and Tan).

Publication of panel, court and tribunal decisions

Ahpra, on behalf of the 15 National Boards, publishes a record of panel, court and tribunal decisions about registered health practitioners.

When investigating a notification, the Medical Board may refer a medical practitioner to a health panel hearing, or a performance and professional standards panel hearing. Under the National Law, panel hearings are not open to the public. Ahpra publishes a record of panel hearing decisions made since July 2010. Practitioners’ names are not published, consistent with the National Law.

Summaries of tribunal and court cases are published on the Court and tribunal decisions page of the Ahpra website. The Board and Ahpra sometimes choose not to publish summaries, for example about cases involving practitioners with impairment.

In New South Wales and Queensland, different arrangements are in place. More information is available on Ahpra’s website on the How to raise a concern about a health practitioner page.

Contacting the Board

The Medical Board of Australia and Ahpra can be contacted by phone on 1300 419 495.

For more information, see the Medical Board of Australia website and the Ahpra website.

Lodge an enquiry form through the website under Contact us at the bottom of every web page.

Mail correspondence can be addressed to: Dr Anne Tonkin AO, Chair, Medical Board of Australia, GPO Box 9958, Melbourne, VIC 3001.

More information

Please note: Practitioners are responsible for keeping up to date with the Board’s expectations about their professional obligations. The Board publishes standards, codes and guidelines as well as alerts in its newsletter. If you unsubscribe from this newsletter you are still required to keep up to date with information published on the Board’s website.

Comments on the Board newsletter are welcome, send your feedback and suggestions to newsletters@ahpra.gov.au.

For registration enquiries or contact detail changes, call the Ahpra customer service team on 1300 419 495 (from within Australia).