Submission on Increasing access to health and aged care: a strategic plan for the nurse practitioner workforce
The AMA does not support the strategic plan for the nurse practitioner (NP) workforce. The document lacks appropriate detail and structure to be considered a plan, and there is significant lack of meaningful strategy required to build the NP workforce and better integrate it into the parts of the health system that would most benefit from access to NPs.
The sole aim of the plan appears to be an expansion of access to the Medicare Benefits Schedule and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for NPs, and to remove the requirement for an NP to work in a collaborative arrangement to do this. We have seen no evidence provided that this is safe, will lead to an increase in the NP workforce, or will improve the distribution of the NP workforce to underserved areas.
The AMA supports an increased role for NPs in Australia’s health system in collaborative, medically-led models. We do not see how this plan delivers on strategies to achieve anything other than establishing NPs as a less qualified alternative to GPs in underserved communities.
