Executive summary

Catholic Health Australia (CHA) is Australia’s largest non-government, not-for-profit group of health, community, and aged care providers. Our members operate over 80 hospitals in each Australian state and in the Australian Capital Territory, providing around 30 per cent of private hospital care and 5 per cent of public hospital care, in addition to extensive community and residential aged care. CHA members also provide approximately 12 per cent of all aged care facilities across Australia, in addition to around 20 per cent of home care services.

CHA appreciates the opportunity to provide input into the draft National Allied Health Workforce Strategy (the Strategy). As leaders in allied health, CHA members look forward to working with the Strategy Steering Group during the consultation process to ensure the National Allied Health Workforce Strategy fully supports all allied health professions to better contribute towards a high-quality and safe health and aged care system for all Australians, irrespective of their wealth or geography.

Overall CHA is supportive of the comprehensive nature of the Strategy, which captures the commonality of a very diverse profession well. The accompanying consultation paper clearly articulates the rationale for a cohesive, national strategy for allied health, as well as the context that the Strategy sits within.

CHA appreciates the work undertaken by the Department of Health and Aged Care to address allied health workforce demand, shortages and broader challenges around sustainability and viability. CHA is supportive of the development of a national strategy for the sustainability and growth of an allied health workforce. This submission outlines opportunities for the Strategy to demonstrate alignment with broader workforce planning efforts, incorporating lessons learnt from CHA members who operate across both health and aged care sectors.

Key observations and issues related to the draft Strategy articulated in our submission include:

• strengthening strategies to promote awareness of allied health professions as a career, including working towards a clearer definition of allied health;
• an increased focus on telehealth and addressing the challenges and potential benefits of artificial intelligence;
• increasing the range of strategies to attract and retain allied health professionals, including strategies to support increased career mobility;
• allied health assistants should be in the Strategy’s scope given the important role they play, particularly in thin markets; and
• more clearly articulating the role of Government in regulatory reform, such as funding a sufficient number of university places and funding research to support workforce planning efforts.

CHA has also made some recommendations for the implementation plan of the Strategy. Specific recommendations have been detailed on subsequent pages of our submission.