As one of its first actions, Cabinet has today approved the fast tracking of a dedicated Health Recruitment, Retention and Workforce Planning Unit.
The new unit will be established within the first month of the re-elected Hodgman Liberal Government to assist with the delivery of more than 1300 new health staff over the next six years.
Tasmania has for many years experienced difficulty attracting and retaining health staff leading to a costly reliance on locums in order to deliver necessary services.
These challenges have been compounded by a lack of strategic workforce planning.
The new unit will be responsible for developing a 20 year Future Health Workforce Plan to support the rollout of more than 300 hospital and community beds and other services across Tasmania.
The Plan will cover current and future training and recruitment, re-training and post-graduate training and recruitment processes, and will address Tasmania’s long-term health workforce needs.
The recent decision by the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine to withdraw training accreditation from the LGH was based around recruitment issues, and is exactly why we need a dedicated Health Recruitment, Retention and Workforce Planning Unit.
The Hodgman Liberal Government considers health a priority and we are hitting the ground running.