Page 6 - ANZCP Gazette MAY 2014

Dear Members
As discussed earlier with members, there is a deficiency in the area for regulation of allied health practitioners who are not covered under the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (NRAS), which is managed by the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency (AHPRA). Many self- regulating professions are excluded and the Government does not plan to increase the numbers because of the difficulties and cost of managing the existing fourteen registered health professions.
The report reviewing NRAS is due to be released in April and it has been hinted to contain a proposal for creation of a second layer to regulate other health practitioners. This may only be a code of conduct or hopefully it may be something more meaningful to recognize other professions.
The members of the National Association of Self-Regulating Health Professionals (NASRHP) met in December and eight out of nine members decided to move forward with our original idea to form a company to regulate the NASRHP Associations who currently practice self-regulation. We want to prove to the Australian public that we are proactive to protect their interests rather than reactive once an adverse incident has occurred. The eight founding members who have agreed to form a company are, Audiology Australia, Australian Association of Social Workers, Australian Orthotic Prosthetic Association, Australian Sonographers Association, Australian and New Zealand College of Perfusionists, Dieticians Association of Australia, Exercise and Sports Science Australia, and Speech Pathology Australia. However, the long-term plan is to allow other self-regulating Associations who meet the registration criteria to join.
Leigh Clarke and Jackie O’Connor from the Australian Orthotic and Prosthetic Association agreed to take on the task of looking at company governance models within the health industry and an even bigger task, which was to collate all the available data from our Associations and compare in it to current NRAS/AHPRA regulation requirements. Each Association agreed to pay for this work to be done and the amount was proportional to the membership size of the Association. Our contribution was $550. In mid February we were sent a draft proposal of the requirements for registration, definitions and mapping of all Associations against recognized national standards.
Seven of the eight Associations met on Wednesday 12th March to discuss the draft document and reach agreement upon the proposed governance and registration criteria for the Company. This was surprisingly easier than I had thought the task would be, knowing some of the personalities involved.
With only a few robust debates, resolved by generalizing statements, allowing the Associations to provide more or less detail we completed our task within 7 hours.
NASRHP is to be an independent body registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee and establish its own standards and operationalize the accreditation process through the Accreditation Council, which will include members of stakeholder groups and include consumer groups. It will oversee the Associations, but it is up to the individual Association to write or determine their own components and to ensure members comply.
The speed at which we all agreed upon the framework the company will adopt, has to be attributed to the groundwork done by Leigh and Jackie. The following headings are the areas that need to be met for registration and require each of us to have policies written up and available for public perusal.
1. Code of Ethics.
2. Codes of Conduct.
3. Scope of Practice.
4. Fitness to Practice.
5. Mandatory Notification.
6. Complaints Procedure.
7. Continuing Professional Development. 8. Recency and Resumption.
9. Competency Standards.
10. English Language Skills
11. Course Accreditation.
12. Professional Indemnity
My email is ali.horton62@gmail.com and I am happy to answer any questions that you may have about what is included in each of these areas but I couldn’t fit 150 plus pages of work into 2 pages. However the Executive does have a copy of the full document!
I expect that you can all see that there is a fair amount of work that the college still needs to do with policy and document writing. So please contact the Executive or me, as we need you to help us get our policies up to standard.
Alison Horton
(a very lonely registration committee of one)
REGISTRATION
COMMITTEE
REPORT
by Alison Horton, CCP.
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MAY 2014 | www.anzcp.org