The release of the draft outline of the National Allied Health Workforce Strategy in June has thrust the future of allied health professions into the policy limelight.

This strategy is more than a mere plan—it’s a commitment to confront both present and future challenges and opportunities for our workforce head-on. 

It builds on the promise made by Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butler to harness the skills of the entire health workforce to facilitate genuine reform. 

If executed well, this strategy will steer the planning necessary to empower key clinical disciplines, such as physiotherapy, to fully utilise their scope of practice.

To achieve this, there is a need for deeper insights into the structure and composition of the allied health workforce—a process that begins with strengthening the definition of the umbrella term ‘allied health’. 

There also needs to be a stronger focus on skill supply issues, ensuring adequate supports and targeted development for growing areas of need.

Making transformative change

Building workforce capability isn’t just about planning—it’s about transformation. 

We now have a significant policy window that presents an opportunity for change. 

To seize this, we need to reimagine our approach to foster contemporary care models and achieve clinical excellence.

The future of allied health depends on making the right decisions today that will guide this essential workforce towards a promising future. 

This relies on data and strategic foresight to make more accurate predictions. 

It also involves prioritising the medically integrated disciplines to address vast unmet need.

The absence of allied health national data presents a significant evidence-to-policy gap and hinders workforce planning for supply, distribution and future needs. 

While regulation plays a key role in maintaining clinical standards and promoting safety and quality, varied regulatory and funding structures, coupled with a lack of centralised strategic planning for allied health, have an impact on sector development.

Describing the ways in which allied health disciplines are regulated will clarify the different requirements and professional standards for each discipline and provide a framework for regulation as new disciplines emerge.

Priorities of the workforce strategy

The complexity of the current system, including the federal–state separation, impedes efficient care. 

A move towards evidence-based, timely primary care interventions is key to preventing costly medical procedures and surgeries.

The strategy should enhance the allied health workforce and service models, enabling effective contribution to the wider healthcare team. 

It should aim to deliver high-value, efficient and patient-centred services, ensuring that care is provided by the right practitioner, in the right setting and at the right time. 

This requires greater insight into the allied health workforce and a focus on needs-based planning.

Our health workforce faces complex challenges such as a rising disease burden and increasing service demand due to population growth and ageing. 

We need more focus on sustainable workforce supply and distribution that will optimise access and meet needs. 

Demand for allied health services is growing across disciplines and roles and the key drivers shaping physiotherapy demand have already been identified.

We’re not all the same

It’s crucial that the new workforce strategy address the skills and capabilities of individual allied health professions. 

Planning for allied health—one of the three pillars of our healthcare system—is marred by a lack of clear definition and data insights. 

The strategy presents an opportunity for the sector to establish its definition, serving as a foundation for the broader health system and policymakers. 

Its successful implementation depends on the ability to accurately describe the sector.

To contribute to strategic investment in disciplines facing shortages and to fund solutions to facilitate appropriate skill mix, we need a clear picture of the necessary disciplines.

This is a fundamental element of establishing an evidence-based framework that accurately describes each discipline’s nature, complexity and outcomes. 

A more comprehensive definition of both clinical and non-clinical disciplines, which will inform and bolster broader health system planning, is a key requirement of this plan.

Hope in the face of reform fatigue 

We’ve been witnessing a steady stream of policy reform consultations, collectively forming a series of
comprehensive proposals with the potential to transform our healthcare system.

The last Budget offered glimpses of reform, moving towards more transparent and efficient funding and beyond mere recognition of the need for multidisciplinary care to enhancing patient pathways. 

Primary care is much more than general practice—it depends on the integration of nurses, physiotherapists, psychologists and pharmacists.

We hope that the era of piecemeal reform, in which significant parts of the system were overlooked, is now behind us.

Much of that hope is rooted in the Scope of Practice Review, intended to fundamentally reshape primary care. 

The new workforce strategy supports our optimism but its success relies on focusing on the medically integrated disciplines, including physiotherapy.

Above all, we must ensure that physiotherapy gets the recognition it deserves within a sector that remains largely undefined. 

It’s not just about stepping into the spotlight—it’s about making our discipline shine brighter.