Occupational Therapy Board of Australia fee set for 2022/23

21 Sep 2022

The Occupational Therapy Board of Australia and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) have announced the annual registration fees for occupational therapists for 2022/23.

The registration fee for occupational therapists is set at $123, an increase limited to indexation.

This will cover the registration period from 1 December 2022 to 30 November 2023.

Practitioner registration fees fund the work of Ahpra and the National Boards to keep the public safe by:

• supporting national registration to ensure only qualified, safe, and professional health practitioners can practise in Australia
• developing evidence-based and practice-tested standards, codes, and guidelines
• accrediting programs of study that lead to registration and endorsement, and
• investigating concerns raised about registered health practitioners.

The National Boards work closely with Ahpra to keep fees as low as possible while continuing to meet regulatory obligations and the expectations of the public and practitioners.

Cost allocation model

In 2022/23 Ahpra and National Boards are introducing a new model for allocating costs for each Board which considers the complexity, volume, and time to manage the regulatory activity for each profession, together with the costs of shared services across the professions. The new model reflects access to more detailed data and is designed to ensure costs for regulating each profession are appropriately recovered, target equity levels are maintained, and the risk of cross-subsidisation minimised.

The new cost allocation model will also have an impact on the costs allocated to NSW practitioners for the registration and accreditation component of their registration fees.

More information on the NSW component is available at New cost allocation model and NSW fees.

Background to how notifications are managed in NSW and Queensland

In NSW, complaints (notifications) about the conduct, health or performance of NSW practitioners are managed by the Health Care Complaints Commission, the Health Professional Councils Authority (HPCA) and the state-based councils for each health profession. Ahpra’s primary role, in relation to notifications in NSW is to update the national register if changes are made to a practitioner’s registration. As such, costs for notifications managed in NSW by the state-based councils and the HPCA are calculated by the HPCA.

In Queensland, all notifications and concerns are directed to the Office of the Health Ombudsman (OHO), which shares this information with Ahpra and the National Boards. Each notification or concern raised is reviewed by the OHO and Ahpra at the same time and a joint decision is made on which organisation will manage the matter. The Queensland Health Minister determines the contribution of practitioners’ fees to be paid to the OHO. This contribution recognises the OHO management of issues related to the health, performance or conduct of Queensland practitioners, and reflects the reasonable costs of what Ahpra and the National Boards would have done if the OHO didn’t exist.

For more information

• Read the media release from Ahpra and National Boards on the Ahpra website.
• Visit the New cost allocation model and NSW fees webpage
• A full fee schedule has been published on the Board’s website.
• For general information about registration fees, visit the fees page

Contact us

• For online enquiries visit www.ahpra.gov.au/enquiry.
• For registration enquiries: 1300 419 495