The Medical Board of Australia has announced a new process following its annual board meeting to safely and quickly integrate urgently needed internationally trained medical professionals into the country’s health system.
In his plenary address at the meeting in Adelaide, Australia’s former chief medical officer, Professor Brendan Murphy AC, said the accelerated specialist pathway developed by the board and Ahpra was “essential”.
“We have a healthcare workforce shortage in Australia… but as always, the shortage of healthcare workers is not evenly distributed geographically or across healthcare professionals,” Murphy said.
“Despite returning to pre-COVID migration levels, shortages continue to persist with no clear evidence that Australia’s training pipeline of doctors will resolve them any time soon.”
Consultations are ongoing
The process, aimed at bringing more medical professionals face-to-face with patients, will initially prioritize primary care physicians, anesthesiologists, obstetricians and gynecologists, and psychiatrists (in line with jurisdictional priorities) and will sit alongside the existing medical school specialty evaluation system.
Consultations are currently underway with universities of applied sciences to identify comparable foreign specialist qualifications that will enable access to the new route, which will sit alongside the existing assessment system of universities of applied sciences.
The new procedure – an accelerated registration route – recognizes certain medical specialist qualifications abroad and grants qualified doctors advance registration as specialists. To protect patients while the new recruits are accepted into the Australian health system, conditions will initially be set for their registration.
“This is an international market where we need to be competitive, and we need to be attractive to doctors and other medical professionals who may want to come here,” Murphy said.
“For those physicians currently in the migration process, we should do everything we can to integrate them into clinical practice as soon as it is safe to do so. “We should do what we can to make migration to Australia attractive to those doctors we really need to address the critical shortage in critical locations and specialties, including subsidizing some of the costs if necessary,” he said .
Regulatory reform
The National Cabinet has put regulatory reform squarely in the sights of Ahpra and the Medical Board and has set an ambitious timetable for implementing the Kruk review’s recommendations, it said at the annual meeting of more than 150 medical regulators and staff across the country this month .
The Kruk review specifically recommended the creation of an alternative, accelerated route to specialist registration for eligible specialists from countries with comparable healthcare systems.
Ahpra and the Board have established a task force to develop the new accelerated pathway and the Board is now consulting with the colleges for the priority medical specialties to finalize the list of qualifications that will form the gateway to accelerated registration.
As a basis for the new accelerated process, discussions are currently underway with RACGP, ACCRM, ANZCA, RANZCOG and RANZCP to determine which qualifications have been consistently assessed as comparable in existing college approval processes.
An additional way to register
Dr. Susan O’Dwyer, a member of the Medical Board and head of the board’s Special IMG taskforce, said the new fast track route is an additional route to registration for IMGs with specialist qualifications.
“Specific qualifications would be validated and become part of a published list of eligible qualifications and if a SIMG has a qualification on the list they would not be required to apply to the college for an assessment of their qualification,” O’Dwyer said.
“Instead, they would apply for specialist registration directly from the Medical Board.
“Under the proposal, they would then work as a specialist under supervision for six months and meet Medical Board requirements such as cultural safety and orientation to the Australian health system.
“Once the requirements are satisfactorily met, they will be granted unconditional specialist registration,” O’Dwyer said.
The Board will deliberate on the registration standard that will be used as a regulatory tool for the new pathway, prior to final review and approval by Health Ministers.
Affiliation with a medical college will not be an automatic outcome of the new accelerated degree program, but the board worked with all colleges through a specially appointed SIMG Advisory Board to examine the impact and possible solutions.
Planned start dates
To meet the Government’s expectations, the Board and Ahpra have targeted a start date of October 2024 for the accelerated specialist path in general medicine and in December 2024 for an accelerated path in anaesthesia, obstetrics and gynecology and psychiatry. As a result, consultation periods on updated registration standards and other necessary policy changes will be shortened.
“The board is committed to creating a safe and effective policy platform and making the complex operational changes necessary to meet these deadlines and rapidly deploy more medical specialists to Australia,” O’Dwyer told delegates.
“The key message from this review is that removing outdated regulatory hurdles faced by internationally qualified doctors will improve care for Australians,” O’Dwyer said.
“The aim of an accelerated pathway would be to have more well-qualified, specialist IMGs to better meet the medical needs of the Australian community, with faster specialist registration for qualified and competent SIMGs and with fewer barriers.
“There should be greater reassurance for international medical graduates that they are registered and able to practice in their specialty, making Australia a more attractive destination.”
Not a long-term solution
While reforms involving National Boards to attract and register qualified international doctors were critical to meeting Australia’s health care needs in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, Murphy stressed that increased migration was not a long-term solution to the pressures facing health systems of the country are exposed.
“In my view there is a significant risk that the ‘sugar effect’ of a migration surge will be seen as easier than the necessary reforms to the training and distribution of Australian trained doctors,” he said.
“This requires us to refocus on implementing the National Medical Workforce Strategy, including its important self-sufficiency goal.”