The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA) welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Department of Health and Aged Care’s draft outline of the National Allied Health Workforce Strategy.
In responding to this consultation, AHHA acknowledges that matching and forecasting the needs, demands and supply of the health workforce is complex in any context.
For the allied health workforce Strategy to be effective in its objective of ‘describing how the Australian Government, state and territory governments, universities and professionals associations can work together to improve planning for the allied health workforce’, it must go beyond describing the adequacy, quality and distribution of the workforce as it currently exists. Rather, it must enable:
- A cross-jurisdictional and cross-sector planning approach;
- Outcomes-focused and value-based changes in scopes of practice and models of care, for both regulated and unregulated practitioners and across health service environments;
- Coordination of education, regulation and funding at the Commonwealth, state, territory and regional service levels; and
- Long-term sustainability.