Recent COAG Reforms
The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) is establishing a new agency to manage and oversee major reforms to the Australian health workforce. The agency will subsume the current National Health Workforce Taskforce (NHWT) activities and assume responsibility for its work program encompassing workforce planning and research; education and training; and innovation and reform.
As a single body with a specific focus on implementing workforce reform, the agency will devise solutions that integrate workforce planning, policy and reform with the necessary and complementary reforms to education and training.
The creation of a new single body working to health ministers, operating across both the health and education sectors and complement jurisdictional responsibilities in health is critical to devise solutions that effectively integrate workforce planning, policy and reform with the necessary reforms to education and training. Governance arrangements will be structured to ensure a national approach that supports all jurisdictions.
In additional to progressing the NHWT work program, COAG has announced the following major reforms which the agency will manage and oversee:
Increasing Supply
- Improving the capacity and productivity of the health sector to provide clinical education for increased university and vocational education and training places.
Reforming the Workforce
- System, funding and payment mechanisms to support new models of care and new and expanded roles.
- Redesigning roles and creating evidence based alternative scopes of practice.
- Developing strategies for aligned incentives surrounding productivity and performance of health professionals and multi-disciplinary teams.
The agency will work with and across all jurisdictions to develop and articulate a national strategy for workforce reform and progress the demonstration, piloting, evaluation and implementation of new workforce models and reforms to assess their contribution to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery, within a framework of safety and quality of care.
The agency will identify, from innovation both locally in Australia and overseas, those areas of major job evolution/substitution and redesign that have potential national significance and demonstrate net benefit to the community. Funding will also be provided to support jurisdictions in implementing new models tested and evaluated. The agency will link into the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme to ensure sufficient regulatory protection for workforce redesign pilots and to support changes to scopes of practice.
COAG Communique - November 2008 (pdf, 144k)
National Partnership Agreement on Hospital and Health Workforce Reform (pdf, 308k)
