Medical regulation at work: Protecting the public in 2016/17

10 Jan 2018

A profession-specific annual report summary that highlights the work of the Medical Board of Australia over the year to 30 June 2017 has now been published.

The report draws on data from the 2016/17 annual report by AHPRA and the National Boards. This information provides a snapshot of the profession as at 30 June 2017, and includes the number of applications for registration, outcomes of criminal history checks and segmentation of the registrant base by gender, age, registration type and principal place of practice.
Notifications information includes the number of complaints or concerns received, matters opened and closed during the year, types of complaint, monitoring and compliance and matters involving immediate action.

Insights into the profession include:

• 111,166 medical practitioners were registered in 2016/17.
• 16,920 new applications for registration were received.
• Student registration increased by 1.5%, to 20,057 medical students in approved programs of study in 2016/17.
• Medical practitioners make up 16.4% of all registered health practitioners in Australia.
• The number of medical practitioners increased by 3.7% from 30 June 2016.
• 42.1% medical practitioners are women; 57.9% are men.
• New South Wales was the principal place of practice for most medical practitioners (34,255).
• The Northern Territory (NT) was home to the smallest number (1,259).
• The age bracket with the largest number of medical practitioners was 30–34 (15,377).
• 896 medical practitioners were under 25 years of age.
• 1,364 were aged 80 or over.
• There was a 4% increase from the previous year in the number of medical practitioners moving to non-practising registration.
• The number of medical practitioners who hold limited registration continued to decrease. This reduction in limited registration could reflect Australia’s diminishing reliance on international medical graduates (IMGs) as the number of Australian graduates increases.
• 3,617 notifications (complaints or concerns) were lodged with AHPRA about medical practitioners.
• AHPRA closed 3,557 notifications about medical practitioners in 2016/17. This represents 53% of all matters closed across all 14 professions in the National Scheme.
• 1,565 medical practitioners were actively monitored by AHPRA because conditions had been placed on their registration.
• Immediate action was taken by the Board on 102 matters relating to medical practitioners in 2016/17, compared with 167 instances in 2015/16.
• 273 complaints were made about possible statutory offences by medical practitioners or medical services during the year. Over half of the new matters related to advertising breaches, and the majority of the remaining matters related to title protection.

To download this report, or to view the main 2016/17 annual report and summary reports by state or territory, visit the AHPRA website.

In the coming month, AHPRA and the National Boards will publish summaries that break down 2016/17 data for the remaining 14 boards in the National Scheme.

For more information

• Visit the AHPRA website
• Lodge an online enquiry form
• For registration enquiries: 1300 419 495 (within Australia) +61 3 9275 9009 (overseas callers)
• For media enquiries: (03) 8708 9200