What the ACCC does

  • We enforce the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.
  • We provide general information about the obligations businesses have under competition law.

What the ACCC can't do

  • We don’t provide legal advice or settle disputes.

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Arrangements between competitors

Some rosters could be considered an 'arrangement between competitors' under the Act. These types of rosters include those that are:

  • run between medical professionals practising through separate entities. These may be any combination of entities, such as:
    • companies
    • legal partnerships
    • sole natural persons, or
    • trusts
  • run by medical professionals within a legal partnership where one or more of the partners is a company
  • run within an associateship, or between associateships
  • involving two or more medical professionals who work for the hospital on a fee for service or sessional basis
  • arranged where the terms of a medical professional’s engagement and remuneration are yet to be set with the hospital
  • arranged by professionals practising through separate entities to provide medical services to private patients at a hospital. For example, anaesthetic services
  • arranged jointly by medical professionals and a hospital, which involves two or more professionals who are engaged by the hospital on a fee for service or sessional basis.

Rosters that involve only medical professionals engaged and remunerated by a hospital on a per annum basis are not considered to be an arrangement between competitors under the Act.

Key criteria for rosters between competitors

Some rostering arrangements may be considered anti-competitive and breach the Act. The ACCC is satisfied that a rostering arrangement does not breach the Act if it meets the following criteria:

  • a key purpose of the roster must be to facilitate patient access to medical services
  • medical professionals on the roster must be able to:
    • practise, even when not rostered on, and
    • see any patients they choose.

Enabling access to medical services

The ACCC is satisfied that a medical roster developed to facilitate patient access to medical services - as opposed to restricting when a medical professional may work - does not raise concerns under the Act.

A roster meets this criteria if it has a key purpose of:

  • ensuring patient access to medical services, and
  • facilitating sustainable working hours for medical professionals.

Ability to practise and access to patients

Rosters must enable each medical professional to practise at any time they choose or accept additional hours of work, if offered.

Rostering arrangements may also specify:

  • the minimum hours that each professional will work under the roster
  • the patients that each medical professional will see pursuant to the roster. For example, ‘patients of all the doctors on the roster’.

Rostering arrangements must not restrict:

  • when a medical professional may practise
  • rostered professionals from also seeing their own patients or any other patients if they choose to.

Medical professionals should not be inhibited from working if they want to when not rostered on. Rosters for medical professionals that treat patients at hospitals may raise concerns under the Act, if a key purpose of the roster was to inhibit any medical professional from providing their services to the hospital when not rostered on.

Allowing medical professionals to take a break while rostered on will not raise concerns under the Act.

Some rosters for medical professionals that provide medical services to hospitals to treat public patients, may have the effect of restricting which patients they treat while rostered on. For example, doctors may be rostered on to treat accident and emergency patients.

These arrangements will only raise concerns under the Act, if it’s established that a key purpose of the roster was to inhibit a medical professional from providing their services to the hospital.

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