Funding and policy support
Australia has a single, national scheme for registered health professionals – the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (NRAS). We support the following bodies responsible for managing the national scheme:
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the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) which administers NRAS and provides administrative support to its national boards
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the Dental Board of Australia which registers dental professionals and students and develops standards, codes and guidelines for the profession.
We also support the goals of the Healthy Mouths, Healthy Lives: Australia’s National Oral Health Plan 2015–2024 to improve health and wellbeing across the Australian population by:
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improving oral health status
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reducing the burden of poor oral health.
Training support
Our Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training (RHMT) program aims to improve the recruitment and retention of medical, nursing, dental and allied health professionals in rural and remote Australia. It includes the Dental Training Expanding Rural Placements.
The 2020–21 Budget included a further $50.3 million investment over 4 years in the RHMT program. This goes towards furthering the rural training pipeline for allied health students and graduates to deliver health, aged care and disability services in rural communities.
Part of this investment includes funding a feasibility study to identify best approaches to increase dental and oral health training in regional locations. We will make the findings from the feasibility study available after the conclusion of the study in the second half of 2022.
Dental initiatives
Our 2021–22 Budget measures provide funding under several agreements that deliver dental services to Australians:
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$458 million to the National Partnership Agreement on Adult Public Dental Service
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around $190 million per year to states and territories for dental services under the National Health Reform Agreement
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$1.4 billion from 2019–20 to 2022–23 for the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, which provides around 3 million children aged 2 to 17 years with basic dental services.