AHPRA’s monitoring and compliance team monitors health practitioners and students with limitations on their registration, or whose registration has been suspended or cancelled. This is one of the important ways that AHPRA helps National Boards to protect the public and manage risk to patients. This is consistent with our regulatory principles and is one of our responsibilities under the National Law.
Our monitoring and compliance program is designed to ensure that practitioners are complying with restrictions on their registration, or identify if they are not so we can manage any risk to patients. The program also confirms that the health practitioner or student whose registration has been suspended or cancelled is not practising their profession.
The documents below are relevant to AHPRA’s approach to monitoring and compliance of practitioners with limitations on their registration.
- AHPRA has established an Expert Advisory Panel on drug and alcohol screening to provide ongoing expert advice on the biological assessment, testing and monitoring of applicants and registrants with drug and/or alcohol misuse, including impairment.
- AHPRA commissioned a report on best practice in biological testing and screening from Professor Olaf Drummer of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. The 2014 report is published below:
- AHPRA introduced an interim drug screening protocol nationally in July 2014 to guide the monitoring of practitioners with drug-related impairment.
The interim protocol was reviewed by independent expert Professor Olaf Drummer from Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, to ensure the approach to biological testing in the National Scheme was evidence based and up-to-date. AHPRA’s proposed Drug and Alcohol Screening Protocol – January 2015 - is published below:
In early 2015, AHPRA is seeking expressions of interest from pathology providers to provide drug-screening services to AHPRA to support ongoing monitoring of practitioners known to have drug related impairment.
The proposed protocol will take effect in mid-2015, after AHPRA has appointed a pathology service provider/s and finalised minor details in the protocol as a result of the appointment process.