Sector news

Clinical governance establishes the conditions for high-quality care. It builds an environment and culture where everyone in a health service works together and with patients and consumers to deliver high-quality care. The Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care has released the 2026 National Model for Clinical Governance. Health services can use the guide to review their organisation’s clinical governance arrangements, identify gaps, develop an implementation plan, and monitor delivery of high-quality care.

Advance Care Planning Australia and Dementia Australia have jointly developed a position statement on advance care planning and dementia to strengthen policy, practice and system responses across Australia. For the workforce across health, aged care and disability sectors, the statement provides a clear, evidence-informed foundation to guide consistent, person-centred practice and strengthen confidence in initiating and supporting advance care planning conversations.

Well-defined measures help to drive improvements in a sector and, when monitored regularly, act as a concise guide for informed decision-making. The national palliative care measures aim to track if 'people affected by life-limiting illnesses get the care they need to live well'. This report provides the second update on the progress of 5 objectives in palliative care - effective; safe; appropriate; continuous and accessible care.

The strategy sets out a 10-year vision for strengthening Australia’s health and medical research system. It will help shape the future of health and medical research in Australia.

More Australians are receiving palliative care, with service use and expenditure continuing to rise across the health system, according to new Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) data. In 2024–25, around 15,900 people received Medicare‑subsidised palliative medicine attendance and case conference services, with more than 78,000 services delivered nationally. Almost 4 in 5 people receiving services were aged 65 and over. In 2023–24, among the 107,500 palliative care-related hospitalisations more than half (55%) of hospitalisations ended with the patient dying in hospital,

The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA), in partnership with the University of Queensland, is developing a needs-based pharmacy workforce model to assess workforce requirements across key areas to support equitable access to pharmacy services across Australia. Pharmacy professionals can contribute their insights and real-world experiences to ensure the model reflects the needs of the profession. The public consultation closes 31 May 2026 and can be accessed via: PSA - National Pharmacy Workforce Analysis