10 May 2026
Australia's health workforce is in the middle of its most significant structural reform in years. The Federal Government's Scope of Practice Review — formally titled Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce — handed down its final report in November 2024, and 2026 is shaping up as the year its recommendations begin to reshape how primary care is delivered on the ground.
For practice managers and GPs, understanding what's changing — and what it means for your team — is becoming increasingly important.
The review examined barriers preventing Australian health professionals from working to their full capabilities. It covered the breadth of primary care: general practitioners, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, midwives, allied health professionals, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers, and paramedics.
The core finding was striking: virtually every health profession in Australia faces regulatory, funding, or cultural barriers that prevent practitioners from working to the top of their training. The result is wasted expertise, inefficient care pathways, and increased pressure on GPs — who often become the default bottleneck for care that trained colleagues could safely provide.
Several recommendations from the final report are moving from policy intent to practical reality this year.
Universities began offering six-month postgraduate courses to qualify registered nurses as prescribers in early 2026, meaning the first cohort will complete their training around mid-year. To prescribe, nurses must operate within an agreed clinical governance framework and maintain an active prescribing agreement with an authorised health practitioner — typically a GP or nurse practitioner.
For practices with nursing staff, this opens genuine possibilities: quicker repeat prescriptions for stable chronic conditions, faster wound care management, and reduced administrative load on GPs for routine presentations. The collaborative model is designed to extend GP capacity, not circumvent GP oversight.
The push for pharmacists to take on greater prescribing responsibilities in collaborative settings is also gaining momentum. Pilots of collaborative prescribing — where pharmacists and GPs share formal responsibility for patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, or asthma — are being evaluated across several states. Evidence from these pilots is expected to inform national policy decisions later in 2026.
The review identified outdated funding models as one of the biggest barriers preventing allied health professionals from delivering the care they are trained for. Physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and podiatrists are often constrained by MBS item structures that do not reflect contemporary clinical practice. Allied Health Professions Australia is actively pushing for funding reform to accompany the regulatory changes, so practices with strong allied health relationships should watch this space.
Not everyone has welcomed the review with open arms. The RACGP described the final report as "reductionist," raising concern that expanding scope without robust clinical governance frameworks could compromise patient safety and fragment care coordination. The college has consistently argued that the GP — with their breadth of clinical training and long-term relationship with the patient — should remain at the centre of primary care.
This tension is not simply turf protection. Continuity of care and appropriate clinical oversight are legitimate patient safety concerns. The most effective implementations of expanded scope will be those that integrate new roles thoughtfully into existing care teams, rather than treating expanded scope as a standalone substitute for GP care.
The practical implications for most GP practices are still emerging, but a few things are worth preparing for now.
Australia's primary care system is being asked to do more with the same resources. The Scope of Practice Review is, at its best, an attempt to make that possible — by letting skilled clinicians do what they have been trained to do. How smoothly that transition goes will depend on how well practices prepare, adapt, and keep the patient at the centre of every decision.