Beat Medical Blog

National medical registration system struggling with demand from doctors, agencies, employers in Australia

Posted by Beat Medical

Following criticism levelled by doctors, medical recruiters, and employers, the Medical Board of Australia (MBA) is reporting that they are increasing their capacity.

After failing to respond to enquiries, poor response times, lack of available documentation, and serious mistakes when transferring information about practitioners to the new national database, AHPRA has advised that they are taking action on the emergent issues.

Representatives of the Board have said that: "AHPRA’s focus continues to be on boosting our enquiry response capacity and bedding down our IT systems. By early next week, we will have doubled the number of enquiries staff whose sole priority is to respond effectively to enquiries, in a timely way[...]".

As a medical recruitment and locum agency, we are very concerned that there will be serious after-effects from the lack of preparedness that the Board has shown in the roll-out of national medical registration. Not only are the phones left unanswered, the Board has failed to provide key forms, policies, and documentation to enable us to place doctors where they are needed as quickly as we usually do.

As members of the Association of Medical Recruitment Australia and New Zealand (AMRANZ), Beat Medical are contributing to assisting the MBA to bring their service to the standard expected by the healthcare industry, and the Australian public.

As an AMRANZ councillor, Beat Medical Director Shaun Hughston is playing a key role in exerting pressure on the MBA to meet the immediate demands of medical employment in Australia. We wish to assure our clients and candidates that we are the forefront of addressing the key concerns and issues surrounding the very tenuous implementation of national registration.

Have you had a problem with the new national Medical Board of Australia? Let us know... click on "Comments" below.