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10 Sep 2018
The Pharmacy Board of Australia (the Board) has announced the national general registration fee for pharmacists for 2018/19.
The Board has increased the fee for general registration to $396. It will cover the registration period for most practitioners of 1 December 2018 to 30 November 2019.
The fee for practitioners whose principal place of practice is New South Wales is $396.1
A full fee schedule which includes fees for interns, limited registration, non-practising registration and other registration types has been published on the Board’s website. This includes the fee arrangements for practitioners whose principal place of practice is NSW.
The National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (the National Scheme) is funded by practitioners’ registration fees. The decision to increase the fee ensures that the Board has the funds required to carry out its duties and to protect the public.
Board Chair William Kelly explained that registration fees are used to meet the full cost of regulating the pharmacy profession and do not cross-subsidise other professions.
‘Part of this cost is a strategic initiative which will change the assessment of notifications process to improve efficiency. This initiative will allow earlier resolutions and result in better outcomes for the notifier and the practitioner.’
‘In 2018/19, the Board is implementing projects and initiatives designed to strengthen our processes for ensuring that only pharmacists who are suitably trained and qualified to practise competently and ethically are registered, and to enable the continuous development of a responsive pharmacist workforce,’ he said.
The Board has funded a competency assessment blueprint as part of its quality improvement program of work on its examinations for intern pharmacists, an intern and preceptor survey to explore options to improve the internship experience, continuing professional development planning tools to support pharmacists to meet their obligations for renewal of registration, competency mapping to support prescribing by pharmacists and conducted a prescribing forum to engage stakeholders to explore pharmacist prescribing to address public need.
Martin Fletcher, AHPRA CEO, said that improving public and practitioner experiences was a key priority for AHPRA.
‘AHPRA is investing in modernising its information technology systems in order to meet the public and practitioner expectation of quicker online services. We have extensive work underway which will deliver better IT and customer support.’
Fees support the Board in the continual development of a safe and mobile Australian workforce for health practitioners and the public in the most efficient ways possible. It also allows the Board to facilitate the provision of high quality education and training for practitioners.
1NSW is a co-regulatory jurisdiction.