Blog

The Zap: latest health and aged care news and alerts, plus key consultations now open

1 month ago
0 Views
21 Min Read

Projections for the supply and demand of Australia’s medical practitioners to 2048 have been released, amid concerns about expanded prescribing roles for pharmacists, reports this week’s edition of The Zap.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government has delivered on its 2025 election promise to open 137 Urgent Care Clinics, there are calls to tackle elder abuse and ageism, and the Australian Centre for Disease Control has assessed the risk to human health in Australia from bird flu as low.

Warnings have been issued about the risk of serious adverse effects associated with the use of unapproved peptides, including liver damage. United States Secretary for Health and Human Services Robert Fr Kennedy Jr has been talking up the use of peptides.

The quotable?

It is ironic that Kennedy, who appears sceptical of the safety of drugs that have undergone full safety evaluations, is prepared to support peptides onto the market without anything like the same level of scrutiny.”

Charles Maskell-Knight writes:

A Pharmacy Board consultation on a draft endorsement Registration Standard: Endorsement for scheduled medicines, proposing establishing a national education standard for pharmacists who prescribe scheduled medicines, closed on 15 June.

A group of seven health provider organisations, including the Australian Medical Association (AMA), the Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP), the Australian College of Nurse Practitioners, and the Committee of Presidents of Medical Colleges wrote a joint open letter to federal and state health ministers and the Pharmacy Board of Australia “raising concerns about the safety implications of expanding prescribing roles without appropriate safeguards”.

The group wrote “our central message is safe expansion of prescribing authority depends on systems that manage uncertainty, ensure continuity of care and maintain accountability over time – not solely on individual competence”.

“These principles are particularly important in care contexts where diagnosis evolves over time and where harm may be delayed, diffuse or under-detected.”

The Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM) said it had serious concerns about the proposal, and warned it “could fragment care and compromise patient safety in rural, remote and First Nations communities”.

It its submission to the Pharmacy Board, ACRRM argues that “while pharmacists play an important role in medication dispensing, safety and patient counselling, prescribing requires broader clinical training, diagnostic expertise and the ability to manage complex health conditions over time”.

ACRRM President Dr Rod Martin said: “Rural Generalists and GPs are specifically trained to assess, diagnose, prescribe, monitor and coordinate care across a patient’s entire health journey. A health lens rather than an illness lens is what keeps communities and the country healthy.”

Martin added that “patients deserve access to comprehensive medical care, not a piecemeal model where individual symptoms are managed separately from the rest of their health”, which was not how a patient with an individual symptom is regarded in the primary care setting.

Ministers and government

On 20 June, the Australian Centre for Disease Control issued a statement following the detection of H5 avian influenza in two birds in Western Australia, saying it would continue to work closely with relevant agencies – including the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing – to assess the risk to human health.

Testing has identified the sample from the first bird as being the globally circulating H5 influenza A strain of concern (H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b), and the CDC said the risk to human health in Australia is assessed as low because:

  • Bird flu rarely spreads to people – transmission requires close contact with infected birds or other infected animals, or contaminated environments.
    Spread between people is very rare.
  • Bird flu is not a food safety risk for chicken meat and eggs if they are handled and cooked correctly – practise good hand hygiene by washing your hands and utensils after handing animals, eggs or raw meat.

Health Minister Mark Butler held a media conference in Brisbane to mark the opening of the final Urgent Care Clinic promised by the Government at the 2025 election.

Butler said the opening of the Caloundra clinic completed a network of 137 clinics “delivering high quality urgent care, seven days a week over extended hours, and importantly, fully bulk-filled”.

He expected as many as two million people annually to attend one of these clinics, “most of whom would otherwise have had to go to the local hospital emergency department”.

Butler also issued a statement on the National Lung Cancer Screening Program, saying almost 100,000 people at high risk of lung cancer had accessed free screening in the first year of the program, and more than 230 primary lung cancers had been detected.

He said “more than 285 Australians are joining the program each day on average, with early results showing the program is detecting cancer sooner and potentially saving hundreds of lives”.

In a media conference marking a new plane for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Butler gave an update on the Bullsbrook Six – the Australian and New Zealand passengers from the MV Hondius which suffered a Hantavirus outbreak. The 42-day quarantine period for the passengers was due to end on 23 June, and they had consistently tested negative for Hantavirus, he said.

“I really want to thank them for the extraordinary way in which they’ve cooperated with this mandatory quarantine order… and for the sacrifice that they have made not to return to their home and their families and their communities as quickly as I’m sure they would have liked to do, but to maintain and cooperate in this mandatory quarantine arrangement to protect their community,” he said.

Butler joined Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy in announcing the opening of the expanded Manayingkarirra Health Care Centre in Maningrida in Arnhem Land.

They said the project “includes a new primary healthcare centre and staff accommodation to meet growing needs for services and expand clinical and emergency care capacity”.

Special Envoy for Men’s Health Dan Repacholi joined Healthy Male (Western Sydney University’s Centre for Male Health) to encourage men to “stop putting their health in the too-hard basket and book a check-up with their GP as part of this year’s Men’s Health Week campaign, 101 Reasons to See Your GP”.

The campaign is “designed to normalise early help-seeking [and] encourage men aged 18 to 44 to act when something changes in their health rather than waiting until issues become serious”.

Repacholi gave a series of media interviews promoting the campaign.

The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DHDA) released the 2026 Whole of Medical Workforce Supply and Demand Study, projecting supply and demand of medical practitioners to 2048.

At a high level, it concluded “while projections of supply and modelled demand indicate that there are likely to be sufficient doctor numbers overall, addressing disparities in geographic and specialty distribution remain vital if affordable, high-quality care is to be accessible to all Australians”.

In particular, the report estimates an undersupply in the specialist and registrar workforces of 12,812 FTE (9.7 percent) and 3,885 FTE (15 percent) respectively by 2048.

The AMA said the report “reinforces the need for urgent action on workforce planning… including the establishment of an independent health workforce planning agency”.

AMA President Dr Danielle McMcullen said “while Australia had invested heavily in increased medical student numbers, there had been a failure to plan for the needs of the community”.

“Governments have been very quick to point the finger of blame when it comes to problems the community has in accessing medical services, but this report reveals they need to do more to fund more training places to meet demand,” she said.

McMullen reiterated the AMA’ s call for an independent health workforce planning agency “to provide robust, data-driven insights into current and future workforce needs [and] enable more responsive and targeted policy interventions”.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer Professor Michael Kidd AO issued a joint statement warning of the potential serious adverse effects associated with the use of unapproved peptides, including liver damage; severe allergic reactions requiring hospitalisation; and inflammation and other health complications.

They said “important information relevant to consumer safety remains unknown”. This included:

  • how these products are manufactured and whether they meet appropriate quality standards
  • whether injectable products are sterile and produced under aseptic conditions
  • how these peptides act in the human body, and
  • the nature, frequency and severity of potential side effects.

The statement said the products often contained BPC‑157, GHK‑Cu, TB‑500, retatrutide and CJC‑1295.

The Victorian Chief Health Officer, Dr Caroline McElnay, also issued a warning, saying the Victorian Department of Health “had been notified of six cases of acute liver toxicity [since January] associated with an unapproved peptide product in Australia, labelled retatrutide”.

The TGA published new guidance on advertising restrictions for prescription medicines “to help individuals and businesses comply with Australia’s regulatory requirements”. It also released updated guidance on advertising health services that involve therapeutic goods.

The TGA said the guidance “provides practical examples to help individuals and businesses to understand their obligations”.

“It explains the types of advertising and promotional activities likely to be prohibited across websites and social media, or in business names and logos, booking systems, product catalogues, price information and other materials.”

The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) said: “Hepatitis Australia has developed new resources to encourage hepatitis B testing and connection to care, particularly for communities at higher risk.”

It said an estimated 220,000 people in Australia are living with chronic hepatitis B, yet around a third remain undiagnosed, and more than three-quarters are not engaged in regular care.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) released updated life expectancy and death statistics (including General Record of Incidence of Mortality (GRIM) and Mortality Over Regions and Time (MORT) workbooks), and injury statistics, including:

The AIHW also released the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program monitoring report 2026, showing “participation rates in the program have gradually improved over recent years, with over four in five (83.5 percent) participants returning to screen again at their next invitation”.

However, only 42 percent (or just under 2.7 million) of the around 6.4 million Australians invited to screen through the program between January 2023 and December 2024 participated.

The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care released new resources to help consumers understand what general practice accreditation is and what it means for their care.

In a joint statement with Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Ms Jillian Segal AO, Ahpra said it had adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism as a reference tool, supported by the Special Envoy’s handbook to support a consistent understanding of antisemitism in its contemporary forms in our regulatory work.

The statement said Ahpra was reviewing its Vexatious Notifications Framework in response to concerns about weaponisation of the notifications process and is establishing an advisory panel of practitioners – including those with lived experience of notifications underpinned by antisemitism – to inform improvements to systems and processes and strengthen safeguards.

It was also supporting research led by the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation to better understand the prevalence and impacts of antisemitism in healthcare settings, and to inform education and training for health practitioners.

The Guardian reported concerns from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network that Ahpra’s adoption of a contested definition of antisemitism to guide its regulatory work could silence health professionals from criticising Israel’s human rights record.

The joint statement by Ahpra and the Special Envoy “condemned antisemitism in all its forms [and] reaffirmed their shared commitment to eliminating antisemitism – together with all forms of racism and discrimination – in health care”.

At a webinar organised by the Australian Association of Gerontology, outgoing Inspector-General of Aged Care Natalie Siegel-Brown was asked what are the greatest risk areas for rights breaches under the new Aged Care Act.

Siegel-Brown said “the greatest risk is not the Act itself, but the gap between the rights it promises and the realities older people experience when they seek support”.

She identified the three areas where rights are most at risk as:

  1. Relying on complaints about breaches as the chief mechanism to deliver rights
  2. Short-term budget management that withholds support and actually creates more cost
  3. A system that was not designed by working backwards from the outcomes.

Consumer and public health groups

The Australian Pain Society and five other organisations issued a joint statement bemoaning the forthcoming disestablishment of the electronic Persistent Pain Outcomes Collaboration (ePPOC) operated from the Australasian Health Outcomes Consortium at the University of Wollongong.

ePOCC collects a standard set of information from specialist pain services, which can then be used for a range of purposes including optimising patient treatment, benchmarking and research.

ePPOC is an initiative of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetics (ANZCA) Faculty of Pain Medicine, and was established in 2013 with funding from the NSW Ministry of Health. Over 90 adult and paediatric pain management services with about 360 separate clinics currently take part.

It appears that the NSW Centre for Clinical Innovation has decided to end its grant support, and ePOCC will close from 31 October.

The pain sector said “the ability to measure outcomes, benchmark services, support research and understand the lived experience of people with pain is too important to disappear”.

“The future model may look different, but the commitment to making pain visible – and ensuring that people living with pain remain seen, heard and counted – must remain.”

Perhaps ANZCA, which reported a 2025 surplus of $5.6 million, could come to the party?

On World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (15 June), COTA said: “Australia must focus on delivering the action needed to stop elder abuse or risk tens of thousands more older Australians being abused.”

COTA Australia CEO Patricia Sparrow said “one in six older Australians experiences abuse, often at the hands of someone they know and trust”.

She said the Government’s recently released National Plan to End the Abuse and Mistreatment of Older People “recognises that ageism itself can drive the abuse and mistreatment of older people”.

“If we are serious about ending elder abuse, we must also tackle the ageism that allows it to occur.”

Sparrow went on “we know financial abuse remains one of the most common forms of elder abuse, yet inconsistencies in Power of Attorney laws across Australia continue to make prevention and enforcement more difficult”.

“Harmonising these laws should be a priority if we are serious about protecting older Australians from abuse and exploitation.”

First Nations

The Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory (AMSANT) welcomed the NT Government’s decision to extend Interim Alcohol Protected Areas.

AMSANT CEO Donna Ah Chee said the announcement “reflects the strong evidence that regulation of alcohol supply, including through ‘dry areas’, plays an important role in reducing violence and improving community health”.

Trade unions

For some time DHDA has been working on “improving” the process for the assignment of MBS benefits for bulk-billed services. The new process to apply from 1 July was to include a requirement for an electronic or physical signature from the patient every time a service was bulk-billed, and a requirement for the doctor to keep a copy of completed assignment of benefit agreements for two years.

Following advocacy from the RACGP, on 18 June the Government announced a set of changes to the requirements, including continued acceptance of verbal consent for 12 months, and the introduction of enduring assignment of benefit for all MyMedicare registered patients, residents of aged care facilities and patients attending ACCHOs.

The RACGP thanked Minister Butler for acting to address the “significant concerns” raised by GPs regarding the impact of the new requirements.

RACGP President Dr Michael Wright said the College’s membership had been “expressing strong concerns about the growing administrative burden associated with the reforms and the potential impact on vulnerable patients for some time”.

“These measures will provide immediate relief for GPs working in aged care and other sectors that would have been most impacted by the reforms, and help ensure continuity of care for patients,” he said.

“Importantly, they reflect a recognition by Government that a one-size-fits-all administrative approach does not work across all care settings.”

Ageing Australia (the lobby group for aged care providers) welcomed the announcement, saying providers had been concerned that the proposed changes to bulk billing would have seen GPs stop supporting aged care residents.

Ageing Australia CEO Tom Symondson said the organisation had been working with the Government “focused on ensuring all aged care residents can continue to access bulk-billed appointments with GPs, even if they are unable to physically sign agreements or lack the capacity to provide documented consent for every individual service”.

“To their credit, [the Government] has listened to our concerns and acted decisively.”

DHDA sometimes appears to consult reflexively on quite unimportant issues. It is remarkable that it does not appear to have held a public consultation process on such an important matter as completely upending the assignment of benefit process for bulkbilled GP services.

Industry groups

Nine industry, medical and consumer organisations (the AMA, the Australian Private  Hospitals Association, Catholic Health Australia (CHA), the Medical Technology Association of Australia, the Members Health Fund Alliance, National Seniors Australia, Patients Australia, and the Private Healthcare Association) wrote a joint letter to the Prime Minister and Minister Butler arguing against reducing the private health insurance for people aged 65 and over to the same level as younger people in the same income band.

The letter asks the Government to consider:

  • The effect on low-income older Australians: many older Australians live on lower and fixed incomes and are more likely to struggle with significant price increases
  • The impact on public hospitals: the measure will see more older patients in public hospitals, increasing waiting times for essential care, and undermine the Government’s efforts to improve access to our public hospital system
  • The impact on regional and rural access: the measure is likely to have a greater impact on regional and rural communities, where private hospital cover is often the only practical pathway to timely care and where private hospital viability is most fragile
  • Publishing the modelling to inform the debate: on private health insurance product downgrades, the cost shift to public hospitals, the impact on private hospital viability, the impact on aged care residents, and the effect on regional facilities should all be quantified and published before legislation.

The letter does not raise any equity issues – because there is no defensible equity argument that older people should receive a greater benefit than younger people on the same income.

CHA released a position paper on hospital-in-the-home (HITH) services, calling for the Government to set a default benefit that private health insurers would be required to pay for HITH services.

CHA said “research on HITH consistently shows lower readmission rates, shorter stays, reduced 30-day mortality, and patient satisfaction above 80 per cent”.

“An independent review has found HITH comparable to in-hospital care on clinical outcomes and self-reported health status, while a report by Private Health Australia estimated that expanding out-of-hospital services could generate up to $1.3 billion in annual savings across the system.”

Given this background, one would expect private health insurers to be falling over themselves to pay benefits for HITH – but they aren’t.

I suspect the problem is insurers believe that they won’t only pay for HITH which is substituting for inpatient services, but will pay for HITH and something close to the existing volume of inpatient services.

Politicians and parliamentary committees

The Senate inquiry into the Support at Home program is holding a hearing on 24 June to take evidence from the Inspector-General of Aged Care, and the inquiry into epilepsy is holding a hearing on 26 June, with a witness list yet to be finalised.

International organisations

The World Health Organization (WHO) released its first comprehensive guidelines for the clinical management of filovirus disease, including all types of Ebola and Marburg viruses.

WHO said the guidelines highlight the importance of early supportive care to improve patient survival and health outcomes, and include 16 evidence-based recommendations.

Finally

The buzz about peptides is apparently due in part to the influence of US Secretary for Health and Human Services Robert Fr Kennedy Jr. Appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience. He said: “I’m a big fan of peptides. I’ve used them myself and used them with really good effect on a couple of injuries.”

Under the Biden Administration, the FDA issued rules preventing compounding pharmacies from producing 19 kinds of peptides.

The FDA has now foreshadowed a meeting of the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee in July to consider removing the ban on seven substances, including  BPC-157, which is claimed to heal injuries and reduce inflammation.

Former FDA official Dr Peter Lurie told NBC News allowing peptides on the market without clinical testing poses a “profound threat” to FDA’s decades-old system for vetting drugs.

“I don’t see why one would take the path of a proper drug approval if there is now this less rigorous, alternative path to market.”

It is ironic that Kennedy, who appears sceptical of the safety of drugs that have undergone full safety evaluations, is prepared to support peptides onto the market without anything like the same level of scrutiny.

A combination of peptides (BPC-157, TB-500 and GHK-Cu) is widely promoted as leading to firmer and more resilient skin, and smoother, more even skin tone and a visible “glow” effect.

Looking at images of Kennedy I can only conclude he isn’t using this combination – or if he is, it isn’t very efficacious.

Consultations and inquiries

Here is our weekly list of requests by government bodies and parliamentary committees for responses to consultations or submissions to inquiries, arranged in order of submission deadlines. Please let us know if there are any to add for next week’s column.

Therapeutic Goods Administration
Proposed amendments to the Poisons Standard
30 June

Therapeutic Goods Administration
Public consultation on interim decision to amend the Poisons Standard in relation to psilocybine
3 July

Monash University
Dementia Guidelines
6 July

Department of Health, Disability and Ageing
Online prescribing services: sharing medicines-related information to My Health Record by default
7 July

Food Standards Australia New Zealand
Review of young child formula
7 July

Medical Services Advisory Committee

10 July

Therapeutic Goods Administration
Consultation on increasing transparency of Good Manufacturing Practice inspection outcomes
13 July

Department of Health, Disability and Ageing
Feedback on consumer input on HTA committee agenda items
16 July

Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (and all National Boards except the Medical Board)
Have your say on how practitioners stay up to date and connected with their profession
17 July

Therapeutic Goods Administration
Radiopharmaceutical regulation in Australia
31 July

Senate Community Affairs Committee
Support at Home Program
31 July

Department of Health, Disability and Ageing
Co-design the future of aged care Application Programming Interfaces
29 August

House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability
Inquiry into the access to and affordability of medical specialists
16 October

Charles Maskell-Knight PSM was a senior public servant in the Commonwealth Department of Health for over 25 years before retiring in 2021. He worked as a senior adviser to the Aged Care Royal Commission in 2019-20. He is a member of Croakey Health Media; we thank and acknowledge him for providing this column as a probono service to our readers. Follow on X/Twitter at @CharlesAndrewMK, and on Bluesky at: @charlesmk.bsky.social.

Bookmark this link to follow The Zap