Director’s message

Welcome to the Spring 2025 edition of the PSR newsletter!

Agency Update

As we near the end of the year, we would like to take the time to thank all our panel members and deputy directors for your continued support and commitment to PSR.

We are just over a quarter of the way through the 2025–26 financial year, and our workload remains steady.

Panel Member Training Framework (PMTF) update

PMTF Phase 2 update

PSR is currently working on phase 2 of the PMTF, which includes creating a competency framework that aligns with the Tribunal Competency Framework of the Council of Australasian Tribunal’s and a formalised Committee vision.

As part of phase 2 PSR is putting together a Committee Vision statement to serve as a guiding framework, aligning the efforts of all members towards a unified objective. A clear vision fosters accountability by setting expectations for performance and conduct. It ensures that the Committee’s actions are consistent with its stated objectives, promoting transparency in decision-making processes. By communicating its vision, each PSR Committee demonstrates a commitment to its mission and values. This transparency helps build public trust, as stakeholders can understand the Committee’s goals and how it intends to achieve them. 
 

Stakeholder Engagement

This year we continued to increase our external engagement and are committed to strengthening our relationships with our stakeholders across the government, legal, and health professions. This engagement is vital for ensuring transparency, accountability and trust across the Australian health community.  

Medical Defence Organisations

We continued our twice-annual meetings with the Medical Defence Organisations (MDOs). Attendees at these meetings included the Director and senior PSR staff, with chief medical officers and legal teams from the MDOs. During these meetings, attendees exchanged updates and discussed topics like Artificial Intelligence scribe technology and emerging trends.

Medical and Health organisations

Significant efforts were made to engage with leaders from the medical colleges and health organisations, ensuring open communication channels regarding our processes and statutory appointments. These discussions often centred around providing and receiving information about matters relating to PSR reviews, referral trends and the PSR process in general.

Australian Health Regulator Network

We continued to meet with the informal Australian Health Regulators Network. These meetings are aimed to facilitate essential conversations between government and health regulatory bodies. These meetings focussed on addressing regulatory issues, practitioner wellbeing, and emerging psychosocial safety concerns. The network includes representatives from:

• The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission
• Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care
• Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency
• Department of Health, Disability and Ageing
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• Medical Board of Australia
• National Disability Insurance Scheme, and
• Therapeutic Goods Association.

Conference attendance

Finally, we actively participated in various conferences to extend our efforts in demystifying the process, ensuring trust in the agency and increasing transparency. The highlight of our conference attendance for 2025 has been attending the International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities International Conference in Dublin, Ireland in September, where we delivered a poster presentation on the PSR process, practitioner wellbeing and collaboration with other regulatory bodies.

Attendance at other conferences, including hosting exhibition booths at the:

• RACGP Practice Owner’s Conference
• AMA National Conference
• Medical Councils International Medical Graduate Conference, and
• RMA National Conference

This attendance allowed us to engage with a diverse range of medical and health practitioners across Australia.

Additionally, Associate Professor Antonio Di Dio sat on many panel discussions at other conferences, including:

• the Medical Professional Liability Associations Thrive 25 conference
• Skin2 Skin Cancer Conference,
• and the Australian College of Nurse Practitioner’s National Conference, where he gave the plenary address.  

Our final conference of the year will be the Royal Australian College of General Practitioner’s GP25 conference in November, where Antonio and PSR’s General Counsel will be delivering a presentation on the common traps that result in referrals to PSR.

We have found these conferences instrumental in sharing our purpose, and engaging professionals across the Australian healthcare community.

Annual Report & Corporate Plan

We are pleased to inform you that the PSR 2024–25 Annual Report and the 2025-26 Corporate Plan have been published and are now available on the PSR website.

The Annual Report provides insights into our achievements, financial performance, and the strategic initiatives undertaken over the past financial year (2024–25), and the Corporate plan outlines our strategic direction, key priorities, and performance measures for the financial year ahead (2025–26).

The publication of these documents is mandated by the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (PGPA) Act 2013, which requires all Commonwealth entities to prepare and present an annual report and corporate plan to ensure transparency and accountability to our stakeholders and the Australian public. 

If you have any questions regarding the Annual Report or Corporate plan, please contact the office and a member of our team will respond.  

Want more information?

PSR posts regularly on LinkedIn about a range of topics, including agency events, recruitment, publications, and significant appointments. To stay informed, follow PSR on LinkedIn!

If you have any other questions, please contact us.