10-year anniversary of the National Scheme

The National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (the National Scheme) was created 10 years ago with one overarching goal: to protect the public.

Before the National Scheme began, health regulation in Australia was fractured – there were eight different regulatory systems for health practitioners, 85 separate health practitioner boards and more than 65 different pieces of legislation.

The National Scheme sought to address the problems in the regulatory landscape by:

ensuring all registered health professionals meet the same, high-quality professional standards
allowing registered health practitioners to practise across Australia without having to re-register in each state and territory.

Ten years on, the National Scheme, managed by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) and the National Health Practitioner Boards (the National Boards), works to protect the public in many ways including by:

registering more than 700,000 health practitioners
setting national standards for each of the registered health professions
approving accredited programs of study
managing notifications made about health practitioners
publishing an online public register of all registered health practitioners.

Our role in creating positive change

Trust in the decision-making processes of regulators is essential. The establishment of our office in 2010 demonstrated, and continues to show, that the National Scheme values fairness and accountability.

Our role and ability to influence positive change has continued to grow. In the past five years, there has been a five-fold increase in approaches to our office. The Ombudsman and Commissioner roles have also been expanded to enhance accountability through reviewing FOI decisions and we will soon begin accepting complaints related to accreditation entities.

We have risen to the challenge of an increased workload with new mechanisms to increase effectiveness, including a new investigation model in 2016, complaint transfer process in 2018, early complaint resolution process in 2019 and new case management system in 2020.

Most importantly, we have continued to provide meaningful outcomes to individual complainants and have worked with Ahpra and the National Boards to bring about significant improvements in the National Scheme. This includes working with Ahpra to:

create and review policies and procedures
enhance communication
improve record keeping and information management practices.