The "Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce – Scope of Practice Review" aligns with identifying and addressing barriers preventing health professionals from working to their full scope of practice. The review includes:

1. Exploring barriers and incentives for primary health care professionals, including AHPs, to work to their full capacity.
2. Highlighting examples of multi-disciplinary teams working effectively by fully utilising their skills to deliver best practice primary care.
3. Proposing flexible funding and payment models to incentivise multidisciplinary teams to maximise their scope of practice.
4. Improving referral pathways and communication between health professionals through technology, enhancing collaboration and care efficiency.
5. Allowing explicit referrals by AHPs and enabling AHAs to perform specific activities, with results shared through improved infrastructure.

These measures support the government's focus on optimising the AH workforce to meet healthcare demands, ensuring AHPs can work to their full potential within a collaborative, well-supported healthcare system. 

AHANA recently provided feedback for Issues Paper 2 from the Review. The Paper proposes options for reform to enable health professionals to work to their full scope of practice and improve primary care. It proposes eight policy reform options across three key themes:

1. Workforce design, development and planning
2. Legislation and regulation
3. Funding and payment policy. 

AHANA's response to Issues Paper 2 highlights the challenges in effectively utilising AHAs within healthcare teams, emphasising the lack of clarity and recognition of their skills and capabilities. We support proposed reforms aimed at workforce design, development, and planning, particularly advocating for a digital competency library to guide role descriptions and delegation. AHANA emphasised the need for inclusion of entry-level AHA skills in the National Skills and Capability Framework and Matrix, along with mechanisms for validating individual scopes of practice and collaboration with peak bodies to ensure fair representation.

AHANA suggested leadership by an independent body to oversee the implementation of the Framework, aiming to address inter-professional disputes and involve peak bodies representing various healthcare professions. We stressed the importance of sufficient government resources to engage and involve paraprofessional workforces in shaping scope of practice reforms, ultimately aiming to optimise outcomes and enhance the integration of AHAs within healthcare teams.

We advocated for legislative and regulatory reforms to optimise the role of AHAs in primary care. While we partially agree with the proposed options, AHANA stressed the importance of a risk-based regulatory approach that separates competence from professional titles to foster flexibility and efficiency within healthcare teams. We highlighted the cost-effectiveness and diverse skill set of qualified AHAs, particularly in underserved areas, and support the establishment of a national body to assess evidence and guide workforce optimisation, citing the World Health Organisation's report on health practitioner regulation as a valuable resource in this endeavour. Additionally, AHANA emphasised voluntary certification as a means to professionalise the AHA workforce while cautioning against unnecessary legislative restrictions that may hinder task delegation and the natural evolution of scopes of practice.

AHANA's response to Issues Paper 2 from the Scope of Practice Review underscores the need for clarity and recognition of the skills and capabilities of AHAs. We highlighted several key challenges hindering the effective utilisation of AHAs within healthcare teams, including:

1. Lack of common understanding about AHA skills and capabilities across healthcare teams and jurisdictions.
2. Uncertainty among AHPs and employers regarding delegation and supervision of AHAs, leading to underutilisation and inefficiency.
3. Risks associated with failure to clarify delegation and supervision arrangements, sometimes resulting in AHAs being tasked with responsibilities beyond their scope of practice.

We look forward to the opportunity to contribute further to this Review to make improvements across primary care.