When registering to become a health care practitioner in Australia students and graduates apply to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). At its vary basic level, the agency is responsible for protecting the public from the risk of harm at the hands of registered health care professionals. As part of this job AHPRA needs to ensure that health care practitioners have the necessary qualifications and continual professional development required to ensure safe and up to date practices. 

The problem arises when the wait times to have a registration application processed stretch into weeks or even months. This means that a student cannot study and that a qualified practitioner may not start working until their application is processed by AHPRA.

Simply put, when a student is enrolled in a university course and is still awaiting their application to be processed by AHPRA they are not allowed to see clients or patients, as per their study requirements, until their application is processed. Once qualified, all study requirements achieved, years of hard work paying off with a job offer, one cannot start work until their registration application is processed by AHPRA.

Fair enough, yes? We need to have a way to regulate and ensure that all health care professionals can be held to account in order to protect the public from risk of harm. There is however great harm being done to the public by the unreasonable wait times for registration application processing by AHPRA which often times lasts months. During this time, the person who has had a job offer cannot start working and helping their clients or patients. Clients and patients are harmed.

The health care professional cannot start getting paid and cannot guess how long the wait time will be. They and their family are at a great financial hardship. The practitioner and their family are harmed. 

The employer has made the job offer but cannot have their employee start work until AHPRA does their job of processing the registration application. The employer is harmed.

The registration applicant pays hundreds of dollars to AHPRA to have their application processed. No guarantees, to apologies, no way to argue or complain about the process. Everyone is harmed. 

Make the registration processing times standardised, predictable, AHPRA as accountable as the health care professionals they aim to regulate.

No longer than 3 weeks wait time for application processing should be permissible. All of our society is being harmed by the current administrative lags. 

3 weeks. No longer than that should be allowed or excusable.