National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission Fact Sheet

A New Education Framework
A National Clinical Education and Training Agency
Improved training strategy
Access to Medicare and PBS
What do you think?
More information

The people who care for and treat us are one of the major strengths of our health system – more needs to be done to value their expertise and provide them support. Adequacy of our health workforce into the future is also one of the most significant challenges we face.

A New Education Framework

A new education framework is needed for the education and training of health professionals – moving towards a flexible, multi-disciplinary approach. This should also ensure clinical training infrastructure across all settings (public and private, hospitals, primary health care and other community settings).

A National Clinical Education and Training Agency

A National Clinical Education and Training Agency should be established. Its role should include:

• advising on the education and training needs of regions
• assisting with planning of clinical education infrastructure
• promoting innovation in education and training
• facilitating a competency framework as part of broad education approach
• reporting every three years on the accreditation standards of health professionals.

Improved training strategy

A comprehensive national strategy is required to recruit, retain and train Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health professionals.

A higher proportion of new health professional training places should be allocated to remote and rural areas.

Access to Medicare and PBS

To reflect current and evolving practice and to improve people’s access to health care, Medicare rebates and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme subsidies should apply in some specific circumstances and within defined scopes of practice to services provided by nurse practitioners and other registered health practitioners working in collaborative teams.

What do you think?

The Government is undertaking a series of face-to-face consultations and is using this website to seek the views of Australians on these and other options.

What do you think? Tell us at a consultation visit or complete the Tell us what you think form to provide your views.

These views will be compiled and reported to Government prior to deciding what health reform should be undertaken.

Individual responses will not be posted to the views provided on this site.

More information

This is a summary of some of the major recommendations of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. Full recommendations can be found in A Healthier Future For All Australians – Final Report of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission – June 2009