The last 3-4 years have seen enormous pressure put on an already strained Australian health system and workforce. This article looks at the remaining challenges for Australia’s health care sector - as well as some potential opportunities.
Remaining Challenges:
- Ongoing high demand for Health Services due to demographic pressures
Australia’s ageing population, increasing rates of chronic disease, and net migration rates will cause demand for health services to remain high into the foreseeable future.
- Inconsistent and restricted supply of health workers and specialists
The Australian workforce is vulnerable to lower workforce participation rates, higher demand for flexible working arrangements, and higher rates of attrition and sick leave. For the health sector workforce in particular, fluctuations and bottlenecks in the training pipeline, and the maldistribution of the workforce across geographical areas and specialties, continue to impact workforce supply.
- The increasing cost of borrowing and investment
The health care sector is reliant on modern infrastructure, medical equipment, and resources. It needs to manage aging assets and increasing barriers to investment. The health sector needs to develop and adopt new innovations and technologies – all while managing integrity, emerging markets, and ethical considerations.
- Making better use of health data
Health data plays an important role in improving health policy, programs, and services. However, the health sector must work hard to support quality data collection, interpretation, and medical research.
- Under-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical workforce
It is vitally important to improve the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical and health practitioners in the workforce, particularly in geographical areas of need.
The Australian government released its National Medical Workforce Strategy 2021-2031, which highlights important future priorities for the medical workforce, including:
- A re-balance of supply and distribution.
- Reforming training pathways
- Building a medical workforce with more generalist capacity and flexibility
- Building collaboration between stakeholders, including medical colleges, government, hospitals, universities and training providers, registration bodies and the private sector.
The Australian government is supporting the health care sector with recent initiatives, including:
- Higher education regulation and funding (e.g. funding universities to support Commonwealth Supported Places in medicine).
- Increased immigration and international workforce flow (to alleviate worker supply).
- Expansion of digital health (including health data sources, telehealth, and support of flexible working arrangements).
- Incentivisation to increase trainee numbers in under-subscribed specialties (e.g. the rollout of the rural generalist program, and expansion of Specialist Training Programs).
- Continued modernisation and improvement of the Medicare Benefits Schedule and subsidised services.
- Extra targeted and fast-track training and registration pathways, including the Bonded Medical Program, or the Indigenous Health Workforce Traineeships Program – which help to improve medical and health care worker participation in rural and remote areas, and increase the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical and health care workers.
The Australian health workforce is expanding, and with a growing number of government strategies, workplace reforms, technological advancements, and training opportunities, workers are at an advantage to negotiate better terms and conditions, and there are opportunities for people looking to transition into the health care industry from a different sector. Medical professionals may find they have more opportunities to progress their careers or work-life balance. Indeed, it is an exciting time to be part of this incredible and diverse workforce.
