The Origins and Development of the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme for the Health Professions in Australia, 2005-2010

Abstract

This study began in early 2010 in response to a dramatic change to Australian health workforce regulations that were due to be implemented on 1 July 2010. The new arrangements introduced consistent registration and accreditation requirements for ten professional groups that had previously been regulated separately across each of the country’s six states and two territories. The study led to four scholarly publications. The first publication described the origins of the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme and mapped the development of its organisational arrangements. The second paper identified the unique nature of the Scheme’s governance arrangements through an examination of its organisational features and the scope of regulatory activity in comparison with other ‘national’ health regulatory agencies in Australia. The penultimate paper demonstrated that the Scheme is neither exclusively subservient to nor independent of the State but, rather, ‘quasi-independent’ in its governance arrangements. The fourth and final publication explicated the Scheme’s accountability arrangements in the context of Australia’s federal system of government. The data source for each contribution to knowledge was a case study based on analysis of key policy and implementation documents and interviews with key participants or stakeholders in the Scheme’s design and formulation. Overall, the thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by identifying and explicating these unique organisational and regulatory arrangements. The significance of the study lies in the elucidation of these unique arrangements in the context of existing literature on health workforce regulation and associated governance arrangements.