Isabella’s story

A health practitioner, Isabella, made a complaint to the Ombudsman because she did not believe Ahpra had sufficiently alerted her that she was due to renew her registration. Isabella said this resulted in her registration lapsing and she was unable to continue seeing patients. Isabella submitted a fast-track application to Ahpra to become registered again, but she said this process took too long. She made a complaint to Ahpra’s national complaints team about her concerns but felt that Ahpra did not respond in a timely manner.

What we found

Our office made preliminary inquiries into the complaint. We found the following:

• Ahpra’s communication about registration renewal and its subsequent handling of the fast-track application for registration was reasonable. Ahpra had provided Isabella with four email reminders, sent a text message and also sent a letter to her prior to her registration lapsing.
• Isabella’s fast-track application for registration was approved within two days of being lodged, as per the expected timeframe.
• Ahpra’s national complaints team had responded to Isabella in a timely manner.

Complaint outcome

Although we acknowledged Isabella’s frustration in this case, our office noted the success of Ahpra’s new SMS reminder system for health practitioners. Ahpra advised that since the system was introduced in 2021, there had been a 54.8 per cent decrease in the number of fast-track applications made by medical practitioners when compared with the previous year. Our office was pleased to be advised that Ahpra intends to continue the SMS reminders for future renewal periods, including to allied health practitioners.