Stevie's story

Stevie made a complaint to our office about Ahpra’s handling of her registration renewal. Stevie explained that her registration had been suspended early in the year. Typically, practitioners practising Stevie’s profession must renew their registration by 30 November each year. However, because Stevie’s registration was suspended, she was not able to renew her registration at that time (but remained on the public register).

Later the next year, the suspension of Stevie’s registration was revoked, and instead a condition was imposed on her registration not to practise the profession. Stevie was provided with a one-month grace period in which to renew her registration. However, she was not advised of this. Stevie failed to renew her registration within this period and as a result her registration lapsed and she was removed from the public register.

Stevie said she contacted Ahpra to resolve the issue and was advised that Ahpra was in the process of generating a new renewal application for her. She said that Ahpra told her it would inform her once this had occurred so she could reapply for registration. Stevie said that despite this advice and following up on multiple occasions, the issue had not been resolved and she remained unregistered.

Stevie was concerned that her inability to renew her registration and subsequent removal from the public register impacted her ongoing legal proceedings.

What we found

Our office made preliminary inquiries into Stevie’s matter, but the requested information was insufficient to make a determination about the complaint. We decided to investigate Stevie’s complaint.
 

Our investigation found that Ahpra did not follow its Regulatory Operations Procedural Documentation for revoking a suspension when communicating with Stevie about her registration renewal. We found that on at least 2 occasions Stevie was not informed that a registration renewal application had been generated for her to action. On another 2 occasions Ahpra did not provide Stevie with a reasonable amount of time to complete the renewal application. We also found that Ahpra should have contacted Stevie by email when attempts to contact her by phone were unsuccessful.

Complaint outcome

Ahpra acknowledged that it should have advised Stevie of the need to renew her registration and apologised for this oversight. Ahpra also advised our office that it intended on making system changes to streamline the process for applicants seeking to renew their registration following a period of suspension.

The Ombudsman made formal comments to Ahpra about the importance of:

• notifying practitioners when their registration renewal application is available to action on
  Ahpra’s online portal
• communicating any relevant information about registration renewal in writing, particularly if attempts to contact the practitioner by phone have been unsuccessful.

We also suggested that Ahpra implements a reasonable minimum period for a practitioner to action their registration renewal application.