Audiology profession

Agency

Queensland Department of Health

Announcement date

12 September 2025. 

Link to announcement 

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-09/health-ministers-meeting-hmm-communique-12-september-2025_0.pdf

Problem being addressed

The Decision Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) examines the instances of substandard care occurring in the provision of audiology services in Australia. Policy problems include:

• for audiology services, information asymmetries, principal-agent issues and patient vulnerabilities pose an increased risk of substandard care
• audiologists have limited opportunities for formalised assessment of competency (including for specialised scopes of practice), and may have inconsistent or insufficient access to continuing professional development, training and clinical across the sector, stakeholders note the influence of organisation-level pressures on audiologists’ delivery of care
• for the minority of cases where an audiologist practices in an unethical or unsafe manner, factors specific to the delivery of audiology services generate barriers to enacting professional sanctions that would protect the public from harm.

Proposal

The Decision RIS considers seven policy options. Following stakeholder consultation*, the Decision RIS examines four policy options in greater detail:

• Maintaining the status quo
• Jurisdictional mandatory current clinical certification for public sector audiologists and uplift in continuing professional development (modified following the conclusion of the Consultation Phase 1 and referred to as Strengthened Status Quo or modified Option 3)
• Jurisdictional Registration of the audiology profession (Option 6)
• National Registration of the audiology profession (Option 7).

The preferred option is Option 7 the National Registration of the audiology profession as having the highest benefit. The Decision RIS applies multi-criteria analysis against the following criteria: care quality assurance regulatory consistency; escalation systems; market awareness; and ethical practice. National Registration of the audiology profession is estimated to increase the regulatory burden for employers, audiologists and universities by $2.15 million per year, over ten years.

* A consultation RIS was not required as the function of the consultation RIS had been achieved by an appropriate alternative mechanism. The Department was able to demonstrate that the policy options under consideration had been tested with relevant stakeholders.

Assessed RIS outcome         

Compliant Decision RIS