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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-04 Daily Xml
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Nurse Practitioner Pilot Program

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:30): My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister expand the nurse practitioner pilot program to other parts of the state? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: Nurse practitioners are vital in supporting GPs, especially during a GP shortage.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:30): I welcome the opportunity to speak about the work we are doing in relation to the nurse practitioner pilot. This is a program that we have started, with support from the federal government, out of a decision that was made at national cabinet to provide some pilot funding to the states and territories to undertake pilots of innovative programs in terms of primary care.

We have used that funding predominantly for two purposes. One is to expand the services that are provided for people who are calling Healthdirect services. As people would know, when calling Healthdirect on 1800 022 222, 24 hours a day, you can speak to a nurse about health concerns. One of the issues had been that a lot of the time they would say 'Speak to a GP'. It is very difficult to speak to a GP particularly within a short timeframe, so we are now providing telehealth services to GPs through Healthdirect in South Australia.

The other component was to provide a pilot program, trying to demonstrate the benefit of fully unleashing the services of nurse practitioners in primary care. We have been running that successfully in both metropolitan and country areas across the state, and the feedback has been very positive. The feedback has been exceptionally positive from patients and also from the practices involved.

This is really about demonstrating to the federal government that if we get a change to the Medicare Benefits Schedule rules, in terms of what nurse practitioners are able to do, then that is going to lead ultimately to a much better outcome for patients across the board. Nurse practitioners will be able to see a significantly larger range of both patients and conditions than they currently do at the moment. Through the program that we have been rolling out they have been bulk-billed services, which is obviously a significant issue in terms of the lack of bulk-billing that is available in the community at the moment.

These nurse practitioners are incredibly well trained and incredibly skilled. They have done additional training and can operate at that extended scope of practice, and it is about remunerating them to be able to do that at that appropriate level through the MBS. The results of this trial will then be going to the federal government to then hopefully demonstrate to them that changing those MBS rules will lead to a much more significant improvement in terms of primary care availability across the community.

The issue with nurse practitioners has also been that it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation in that nurse practitioners have been around for a long time now, at least 20 years or so, but in the past 10 years in particular we haven't seen a big growth in the number of nurse practitioners because there haven't been positions available, particularly in terms of primary care. We have been expanding the scope of nurses in the public health system over successive governments, but in many cases people haven't had to do the nurse practitioner official training to operate at that extended scope, but in primary care you do.

We are hopeful that changing those MBS rules will not only allow nurse practitioners to operate more but encourage more people to become nurse practitioners and do that additional training, because they will see the pathway to that job if they undertake that additional training and that additional qualification.

We are very keen, is the short answer, to see this program expand. We are waiting to see the results of the program. We will be knocking on the door of the federal government—as, I would say, WA have been undertaking some similar work and I understand they have had some similar positive results. Hopefully, we can demonstrate some national change in terms of the Medicare rules that will lead to improvements for patients in both metropolitan and country areas across the country.

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