A joint letter from GP colleges has boosted the call for a nationally consistent approach to ADHD care.
The push for ADHD care reform still has juice, say the RACGP, ACRRM and the Australasian ADHD Professionals Association (AADPA) in a recent letter urging for government reform.
State, territory and federal health ministers discussed the issue at the Health Ministers Meeting in Perth on Friday, and endorsed the need for national harmonisation of ADHD diagnosis and prescribing practices.
Accessibility was a focal point of the joint letter, which was sent prior to the Health Ministers Meeting, and said the proposed changes would prevent unnecessary barriers for families seeking ADHD care.
Another highlight of the letter was streamlining prescribing rules across the nation to allow all specialist GPs to prescribe for the condition, in addition to psychiatrists and paediatricians.
If the RACGP and ACRRM get their way, GPs will be allowed to initiate, change and continue ADHD medications for children and adults by 30 June 2026.
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Other elements of the streamlining focused on aligning clinical criteria such as age limits, review periods and transition rules from child to adult care.
“We want to achieve nationally consistent rules so that patients in all communities can benefit from faster, fairer, and more affordable ADHD care,” RACGP president Dr Michael Wright told The Medical Republic.
“The finer details such as a nationalisation of state and territory poisons act legislation is one for policy-makers to navigate.
“Clearly, there is momentum for reform given that the health ministers agreed in June this year that harmonising ADHD prescribing rules would be a key priority.”
In a communique from the health minister’s meeting, it was noted that several individual state reforms had already been announced.
However, the state-regulated Poisons Acts have become a barrier to achieving a national harmonisation.
The AADPA has recommended amending each individual state and territory act to allow for a nationally consistent approach to ADHD treatments and more efficient interstate treatment.
ACRRM that pointed out that state-by-state regulation irregularities often disproportionately impact rural and regional patients.
“It is ridiculous in 2025 that you can go across an invisible border to the next state, where lots of the other prescribing and dispensing rules are the same, yet be stuck with a different poisons act,” ACRRM president Dr Rod Martin told TMR.
“It means that people won’t have to do silly things like having a having a GP on either side of the border.
“There’s plenty of really good, pretty consistent state level safeguards to make sure that that people aren’t going and getting excessive amounts of it that they are selling for profit.
“Once you’ve done the done the necessary training, it’s the same as when we had to do training for things like hepatitis C or antiviral management.”
