9 February 2006
Qld Government should support Productivity Commission push for a more sustainable and responsive health workforce
- Traditional professional roles are vital to quality, but not everyone’s skills are being fully used
All change must be based on solid evidence that it improves service quality and availability
- Qld’s rural and remote communities could be big winners out of this report
- The Queensland Government should support, at tomorrow’s (10 February) Council of Australian Government’s (COAG) meeting, the Productivity Commission’s push for a more sustainable and responsive health workforce, the Queensland Nurses Union (QNU) said today.
Like other nursing organisations around Australia, the QNU has been carefully studying the Productivity Commission’s research report, titled Australia’s Health Workforce, which was commissioned by COAG in 2004 and released in January.
With over 30,000 members the QNU is the largest nurses organisation in Queensland. Its support for the general thrust of the Productivity Commission’s report is a further boost for the report’s acceptance across the health workforce. The NSW Nurses Association (NSWNA) and other nursing bodies have given similar support.
QNU secretary, Gay Hawksworth, said this report is a significant contribution to the healthcare debate in Australia and, if implemented properly, can significantly improve the delivery of health care services across Australia.
“As the current Queensland situation proves, there is definitely room for improvement in the way the health workforce is utilised and the way health services are delivered. However, the Productivity Commission is right to point out that any change must be evidence based and not simply driven by cost imperatives,” Ms Hawksworth said.
“The QNU is a strong supporter of evidence-based change, rather than cost-based change, and in this report the Productivity Commission has also adopted that idea. There will always be professional boundaries and these are essential to the maintenance of safe, high quality health services. However, to make sure we get the best out of the workforce it is essential that those boundaries be based on evidence, not scaremongering or professional ‘patch protection’.
“The process of introducing Nurse Practitioners in Queensland is a good example of how such an approach works for the benefit of everyone. It ensures skilled workers are fully utilised, without them overstepping their capability.
“Unfortunately, many of the new jobs and roles popping up, especially in the area of personal care, are being driven by cost issues rather than clinical evidence. The establishment of a national health workforce improvement agency, to oversee the introduction of new models of care and new career paths, should help ensure change is based on evidence that it improves efficiency and quality.
“The extension of Medicare rebates to a wider range of health professionals will also ensure we get the best out of the health workforce. This is a long overdue change and the QNU has a number of ideas on areas where this should and could be done.
“We also support the establishment of national bodies to regulate the accreditation of education and training in the health sector and the registration of health professionals. However, on a practical level we share the NSWNA’s view that these bodies will work better if they are professionally-based rather than operating across the entire workforce as is recommended by the Commission.
“For example, there should be a national nurses registration body rather than one board for the entire health workforce. As the Queensland Public Hospitals Royal Commission shows, the quality of education and training and the process of registration are vital to the maintenance of quality.
“We doubt that a sector-wide course accreditation board and a sector-wide registration board could handle the workload and provide the diligence required to protect the public. These are some of the practical issues we believe COAG should address before adopting the report.
“There are a number of others, but we believe they can be ironed out if people are prepared to listen. None detract from the general thrust of the report and the QNU believes the Commission has mostly come up with a set of recommendations that will be good for health care in Australia. We look forward to assisting in their implementation.
“Finally, the Productivity Commission has devoted considerable time and energy to the specific problems facing health care delivery in rural and remote areas. This is a major problem for Queensland and the QNU has been working on solutions for years.
“As the Commission points out, nurses are the backbone of health care delivery in rural and remote areas and they are the only professional group with any real numbers in most of these areas. In fact, health services would completely collapse in rural and remote areas if it were not for nurses.
“The QNU agrees with the Commission that a more sustainable and responsive health workforce is necessary for health service delivery in rural and remote areas. New models of care are also essential to this.
“However, as said, change must be based on evidence that quality will be maintained or improved. Like all Australians, rural and remote Queenslanders are entitled to high quality health services and we should not simply adopt the idea that any service is better than no service. We should be providing good services and the QNU believes that can be done, especially if nurses are better utilised and supported. We believe many of the Commission’s recommendations can help do that and, as a result, rural and remote communities could be big winners out of these changes,” Ms Hawksworth said.
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