The government has commissioned Professor Mark Cormack, the former chief executive of Health Workforce Australia, to investigate how nurses, pharmacists, paramedics and other health practitioners can do more in the health system.
Nurses, paramedics, pharmacists and physiotherapists will push for greater powers to prescribe medicines or treat patients, as a review of health professionals’ roles examines how to boost capacity in Australia’s strained primary-care system.
Queensland, NSW and Victoria have trialled prescribing of contraceptives and UTI treatments by pharmacists, while the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia’s national president, Dr Fei Sim, said they could also manage common ailments such as skin conditions and help triage patients.“We want to do more to support our patients, and we have the skills and expertise to do more, but it is not possible to do more for less,” she said.
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Nicole Higgins also said she wanted the review to be about more than “just role and task substitution”. “The biggest problem is that, in many cases, the current Medicare funding system … doesn’t directly cover the cost of these activities.”
Allied health professions will also be involved in the review. Physiotherapists and paramedics, for example, say they should be able to refer people to specialists or for X-rays and other scans without going through a hospital or GP.
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