Medical regulation at work: Protecting the public in 2015/16

09 Mar 2017

A profession-specific annual report summary that looks into the work of the Medical Board of Australia over the year to 30 June 2016 has now been published.

The report draws on data from the 2015/16 annual report by AHPRA and the National Boards. This information provides a snapshot of the profession as at 30 June 2016, 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:

• 107,179 medical practitioners were registered in 2015/16. 
• 16,203 new applications for registration were received. 
• Student registration increased by 6%, to 19,760 in 2015/16. 
• Medical practitioners make up 16.3% of all registered health practitioners in Australia. 
• The number of medical practitioners increased by 4% from 30 June 2015. 
• 41.5% medical practitioners are women; 58.5% are men. 
• New South Wales was the principal place of practice for most medical practitioners (33,236). 
• The Northern Territory (NT) was home to the smallest number (1,177). 
• The age bracket with the largest number of medical practitioners was 30–34 (14,536). 
• 1,542 medical practitioners were under 25 years of age. 
• 1,251 were aged 80 or over. 
• As part of the registration process, 11,891 criminal history checks were carried out. Of 267 disclosable court outcomes, none required regulatory action. 
• 3,147 notifications (complaints or concerns) were lodged with AHPRA about medical practitioners. 
• AHPRA closed 2,718 notifications about medical practitioners in 2015/16. This represents 52% of all matters closed across all 14 professions in the National Scheme. 
• 1,767 medical practitioners were actively monitored by AHPRA because conditions had been placed on their registration. 
• Immediate action was taken by the Board on 167 matters relating to medical practitioners in 2015/16, compared with 132 instances in 2014/15. 
• 202 complaints were made about possible statutory offences by medical practitioners or medical services during the year. Almost all matters related to the use of protected titles or advertising concerns.

To download this report, or to view the main 2015/16 annual report and summary reports by state or territory, visit our microsite.

In the coming month, AHPRA and the National Boards will publish summaries that break down 2015/16 data for the remaining 13 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