4 February 2011 The national health registration process for health professionals has descended into the Gillard Government’s latest bungle, set to rival the pink batts scandal and the BER fiascos.
Thousands of health professionals are battling to have their registration renewed or be registered for the first time, but Health Minister Nicola Roxon has failed to provide the resources to the new Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency to cope with the flood of registrations.
Shadow Health Minister Peter Dutton said today that meant that hospitals, general practices, community health agencies and allied health are being denied staff. Doctors, nurses and allied health professionals are being prohibited from working.
He said some health professionals – unaware that their registrations had not been renewed had continued providing services.
Patients may not be able to claim Medicare benefits or on their private health insurance for those treatments.
The health provider could also face liability issues.
“The ministerial incompetence and bureaucratic blundering that allowed this to happen is an outrage,” Mr Dutton said.
“Yet again Labor has shown that they can’t manage a program, they fail to get the detail right and the consequence for health workers and their patients is chaos.”
“Make no mistake this rivals the worst blunders of the Rudd-Gillard Government with serious consequences for health workers and their patients.”
Mr Dutton has demanded that the Health Minister reveal the number of health professionals whose registration has not been renewed and the number of graduates in the various streams of healthcare who have not had applications for registration granted.
“Minister Roxon needs to answer those questions. She also needs to tell us how she is going to fix the problem. She owes it to these dedicated health professionals and more so to their patients.”
“The situation as it stands is unacceptable,” Mr Dutton said.
“This is a minister and a government that likes to make grand announcements – such as establishment of a national health worker registration process – but then fails to do the hard work to make sure the process actually succeeds.”
Mr Dutton said the signs that the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency was faltering have existed for some time, but Minister Roxon had failed to take any action.
He said it appeared the flood of registrations needed in the New Year appeared to overwhelm the agency, yet everyone knew how many people would need new registration and exactly when they would need it by.
“The Minister needs to fix the problem immediately, explain what’s gone wrong and why, explain why she failed to fix it before and what she intends to do right now.”