The Medical Board of Australia (MBA) has released a profession-specific summary of annual report by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) that was published in November 2017. The AHPRA annual report outlines key statistics relating to the health professions governed by the fourteen national boards and includes information such the number of existing and new registrants, the demographics of the registered health care professionals, and notification information.

Registrant demographics includes segmentation of the registrant base by gender, age, registration type and principal place of practice. Notifications information includes the number of complaints or concerns received, matters opened and closed during the year, types of complaint, monitoring and compliance and matters involving immediate action [1].

Statistics pertaining to notifications over the last year include [1,2]:

  • 10,540 practitioners had a notification raised about them nationally. 6,898 notifications were received by AHPRA about all health practitioners.
    • 3,617 notifications were lodged against **medical practitioners **(5.1% of medical practitioners had notifications made about them).
      • 102 notifications resulted immediate action being taken by AHPRA, of which 23 resulted in suspension of registration.
      • 224 mandatory notifications were made (161 about standards, 41 about impairment, 5 about alcohol or drugs, and 17 about sexual misconduct)
  • 3,011 practitioners were monitored by AHPRA for health performance and/or conduct during the year.
    • 1,565 medical practitioners were actively monitored by AHPRA
  • 1,895 advertising-related complaints were made to AHPRA (statutory offence)

Statistics pertaining to changes in registrations of medical practitioners over the last year (compared to the year before) include [1,2]:

  • 4% increase in the number of medical practitioners moving into a non-practising registration.
  • 3.7% increase in the number of medical practitioners.
  • 1.5% increase in the number of registered medical students.

Also included in the AHPRA annual report is a brief summary of the activities of each of the regulatory boards. For example, the report provided a summary of the results of the Independent review of the use of chaperones to protect patients in Australia that was commissioned by the MBA and included a brief description of the recommendations that were produced by the review.

Later this month, each of the National Boards will publish summaries of the remaining data for the remaining 14 boards in the National Scheme [1].

  1. http://www.medicalboard.gov.au/News/2017-01-10-regulation.aspx\
  2. http://www.ahpra.gov.au/annualreport/2017/downloads.html