NT Annual Report Summary 2015/16

Foreword from the AHPRA Chair and CEO

The regulation of almost 660,000 registered health practitioners across 14 health professions and a federation of eight states and territories is a large and important task.

AHPRA and the National Boards rely on the local knowledge and expertise of boards, committees and our offices in each state and territory to protect the public Australia-wide. Our number one priority is patient safety while enabling a competent and flexible health workforce to meet the current and future health needs of the community.

The NT has 6,913 registered health practitioners. This represents 1.1% of all Australian practitioners, with growth of 3.2% from last year.

Strengthening relationships with stakeholders was an important focus for the NT office and the local boards and committees during the year, with a number of regular stakeholder meetings, presentations and events.

The NT office continued its strong emphasis on improving how it manages notifications, including a pilot decision-making matrix for allocating matters between the National Boards and the health complaints entities. In partnership with the new NT Health and Community Services Commissioner, the NT office completed a significant body of work to redesign the consultation process between the NT office and the Commission, considerably improving communications about new notifications and complaints.

The NT office manages all the registration applications AHPRA receives for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners, and provides support to the Registration and Notifications Committee of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Practice Board.

Grandparenting provisions for the profession under the National Law [Section 303] ceased to apply at the end of June 2015, and the office experienced a surge in registration applications in the weeks before provisions expired.

This contributed significantly to an increase in the number of registered Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners of well over 50% by the end of June 2016.

The NT office ensures timely and effective regulatory decision-making, in partnership with the local Territory Boards and Committees. This is consistent with our shared regulatory principles and our commitment to being a risk-based regulator.

We thank the staff of the AHPRA NT office, board and committee members for their hard work and commitment over the past year. We particularly acknowledge and thank NT State Manager Jill Huck for her leadership of regulation in the Northern Territory for many years. While much has been achieved, there is always more to do. We look forward to continuing to work with them to serve the NT community.