MBA Denies AIMA request

MBA Public Consultation Update

On the 20th of March 2019 AIMA formally wrote to the MBA to request an immediate and full retraction of the ‘public consultation paper on clearer regulation of medical practitioners who provide complementary and unconventional medicine and emerging treatments.’

On the 28th of March 2019 the MBA advised AIMA that our request was denied and that the public consultation on the proposed guidelines would continue as planned. The MBA advised that AIMA’s objections to the guidelines would be taken into account as part of the public consultation.

AIMA’s request was based on five primary concerns:

1. That the proposed guidelines are unnecessary
2. That the guidelines don’t conform to COAG Principles for best practice regulation
3. That the scope of the proposed guidelines is poorly defined creating ambiguity and uncertainty
4. That the amalgamation of three disparate groups into one definition is not scientific
5. That there has been a lack of procedural fairness in the development of the proposed guidelines

AIMA still holds that our objections to the proposed guidelines are valid. We believe that if adopted the guidelines would compromise integrative doctors’ practise.

We encourage all members of the integrative medicine community to participate in the public consultation, particularly to demand that the MBA present evidence of need, provide unambiguous definitions of their terms and to remove any mention of integrative medicine and integrative doctors from these guidelines.

You can read our letter to the MBA here.