AHPRA Fast-Track for General Practitioners set to be Rolled Out in 2024

Great news: we’ve had another positive update from AHPRA about improvements to processes to bring urgently needed GPs to Australian communities.

Doctor Connect are glad to be in a position to help General Practitioners make their move to their dream job in Australia.

This week, AHPRA has announced a new process to safely fast-track urgently needed internationally trained medical specialists into the Australian health system. GPs, anaesthetists, obstetricians and gynaecologists, and psychiatrists are the priority specialties identified by jurisdictions

The new process – a fast-track registration pathway – will recognise specific overseas specialist medical qualifications and grant upfront specialist registration to eligible doctors. Initial conditions on their registration will be imposed as a safeguard to protect patients while the new recruits are inducted into Australia’s healthcare system.

The Kruk review explicitly recommended the creation of an alternative fast-track pathway to specialist registration for eligible medical specialists from countries with comparable healthcare systems.

This is in line with a series of changes over recent years that have streamlined and simplified health practitioner regulation, to ease skills shortages in critical health professions, while maintaining quality and safety standards.

Remembering that the Kurk report aims for a registration system that will improve the experience of overseas health practitioners and employers in navigating the end-to-end process by:

• Removing duplication and aligning evidentiary requirements so applicants only have to ‘tell us once’, with information shared across regulators and agencies, moving to a single portal over time
• Automating and/or streamlining application steps, such as criminal history checks, the issuance of a Medicare Provider Number (MPN), and visas
• Removing migration barriers, including pausing labour market testing, expanding age exemptions for visas, and allowing practitioners to work to their full scope of practice
• Providing more support to applicants, with governments improving coordination on recruitment, candidate support and onboarding, and centralising information on the process

More practitioners are needed now and into the future due to the growing and aging population, and the GP shortage is projected to rise, particularly in rural and remote locations.

Full information from AHPRA is here.

The Doctor Connect Recruitment Team is connecting with suitable practices with DPA and MM2-7 vacancies for Partially Comparable and Substantially Comparable GPs.

And the Doctor Connect Registration Team will help you work through the processes in place, as they evolve.

Contact us to find the right opportunity today.