Page 9 - ANZCP Gazette April 2021

The Allied Health Professions Australia (AHPA) is the peak body that represents and advocates for Allied Health Professionals throughout Australia. The office has been busy all year working with each State’s Department of Health and their Chief Allied Health Officers during the pandemic advocating for AHPA members to continue providing support to their clients. Originally excluded from telehealth conferencing payments, AHPA sought and gained inclusion for all those able to work online with clients. The Government found that telehealth was actually a practical solution for remote and rural communities to access health care, particularly where relevant practitioners did not exist.
Claire Hewat, the CEO at AHPA, has made a few changes to the management and focus of AHPA. Two thirds of the members within the professional organisations affiliated with AHPA work in private practice and AHPA represents them with submissions, representation on boards and meetings with the many Government departments and agencies including NDIS, Primary Health Care Scheme, Digital Health, Aged Care, Mental Health, Indigenous Care and Remote/Rural Health Care. During the pandemic Claire has been able to open many doors that were previously closed to Allied Health and developed a relationship with other government areas of health care. However, Claire is concerned that the AHPA is not doing enough for the other third of the membership base that work in hospitals and would like to engage more with them.
In July last year, the Commonwealth Government appointed a new Chief Allied Health Officer, Dr Anne-marie Boxall, [with a physiotherapist backgound] who regularly attends AHPA’s forums. Anne-marie has advised ANZCP on reimbursement for the MUSC course and avenues to explore setting up a course here in Australia.
AHPA currently holds regular online meetings and sends a fortnightly newsletter to every Association to update members on relevant events. The College would be happy to pass this on if anyone is interested. There is also a lot of valuable information available from their website at https://ahpa.com.au
National Alliance of Self-Regulating Health Professions (NASRHP) is now fully operating as an accreditation agency.
NASRHP aims to facilitate national consistency in quality and support for self-regulating health professionals and satisfy national and jurisdictional regulatory requirements. Specifically this agency aims to:
• Maintain a framework of standards for self-regulating health professions.
• Provide a single point of contact for stakeholders and interested parties.
• Advance and promote self-regulating health professions.
• Increase public confidence in self-regulating health professions.
• Advocate for self-regulating health professions in the areas of regulation and standards.
This year saw two other allied health groups submit applications for membership. The Australian Orthotic Prosthetic Association (AOPA) became a Qualifying Member and their recently application for full membership is undergoing assessment. The Australian Music Therapy Association (AMTA) also became Provisional Members. ANZCP has submitted an application for Qualifying Member.
I have been working on reviewing and rewriting the standards required to apply for provisional membership; some of these documents you may have noticed appearing on our website. The only standard holding us up from applying for full membership is our lack of an “accredited” education/training pathway. Hopefully this will be resolved with our transition to the Medical University of Southern Carolina Master’s degree.
We have had three meetings this year and continue to update our Standards to reflect current best practice. This will be my last year as a Director on the NASRHP Board, as the Board transitions from a founding seven member committee to a smaller five member committee selected from the current membership base.
You may access the Standards from their website https://nasrhp.org.au
REGISTRATION NEWS
Alison Horton CCP, FANZCP
APRIL 2021 | www.anzcp.org 6