Health Professionals Award: What Changes on 1 October 2026

Key Takeaways

• The Fair Work Commission's Expert Panel finalised the health professionals stream of the Health Professionals and Support Services Award (MA000027) in decision [2026] FWCFB 123, handed down 26 May 2026.
• A new classification structure and the first stage of new minimum rates take effect from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 October 2026. The increases then phase in over five approximately equal stages, twelve months apart, with the remaining four operating from 30 June in each of 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030.
• The start date moved. The December 2025 decision set it at 30 June 2026; the Commission pushed it to 1 October 2026 so employers could work out the correct classification translations for existing staff and stay compliant with the Fair Work Act.
• This is not simply a pay rise. Every health professional on the award has to be mapped into a new level, based on their profession's standard minimum qualification (an AQF level, set out in Schedule B) and their experience. Getting a translation wrong is how a practice underpays without meaning to.
• Dental assistants and pathology collectors were done separately and are already live: their new levels applied from 1 April 2026 under Schedule J, with stage 1 increases of around 4 per cent (rising to 7.95 per cent for a Level 1 to Level 3 move and 9.26 per cent for Level 2 to Level 6), and a second stage from 1 January 2027. A practice that missed that change is already exposed.
• Ignoring the paperwork carries real cost. In February 2026 the Federal Circuit and Family Court penalised the former operators of a Merrylands medical centre $36,000 ($30,000 against the company, $6,000 against its sole director) for deliberately failing to act on a Fair Work compliance notice about an underpaid registered nurse.
• Final dollar rates are not settled yet: the Commission said a further determination will follow the Annual Wage Review 2026 to fold in any rate changes from that case. Map your classifications now, apply the rates when they publish.

On 1 October 2026, the Health Professionals and Support Services Award gets a new classification structure for health professionals and the first of five annual pay increases. The change applies from your first full pay period on or after that date. The real work is not the pay run, it is correctly translating every existing employee into a new classification level before then.

What did the Fair Work Commission actually decide?

On 26 May 2026 the Expert Panel issued decision [2026] FWCFB 123, which finalised the variations to the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 dealing with the gender-based undervaluation of the work of health professionals. It is the last piece of a review the Commission began on 7 June 2024 across five awards in female-dominated sectors.

The Panel found that the award's minimum rates had not properly reflected the qualifications, skills, responsibility and complexity of the work, and that the fix required two things together: a rebuilt classification structure, and higher minimum rates attached to it. Both commence from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 October 2026.

The increases are not delivered in one hit. The December 2025 decision [2025] FWCFB 297 determined that they should be phased in over a maximum of five approximately equal stages, twelve months apart. That timetable survived. The first stage lands on 1 October 2026 and involves an initial 5 per cent increase, and the remaining four operate from 30 June in each of 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030.

Why did the start date move from 30 June to 1 October 2026?

This is the detail that tells you what the change really is. The December 2025 decision had set commencement at 30 June 2026. Employer parties came back and asked for more time, and at paragraph [80] of the May 2026 decision the Panel agreed, for a specific reason worth quoting in substance: employers may need further time to obtain the necessary information about some employees' qualifications and the work they actually perform, to implement the new structure including identifying the appropriate translations for current employees, and to make sure they comply with the Fair Work Act.

Read that again as a to-do list, because that is what it is. The Commission did not give practices three extra months to budget for a pay rise. It gave them three extra months to do a classification audit: to work out, employee by employee, what qualification each person holds, what work they are genuinely doing, and which new level that puts them on.

That is the compliance risk in this change. A pay rise you can absorb. A misclassification compounds silently, every pay cycle, until someone checks.

Who does the Health Professionals Award actually cover in a practice?

The Health Professionals and Support Services Award (MA000027) is the modern award covering most professional and support staff in private medical, allied health and health services practices. It runs two distinct streams, and the 1 October change hits one of them.

The health professional stream covers employees such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, psychologists, dietitians, exercise physiologists, podiatrists, audiologists, social workers, radiographers, sonographers and genetic counsellors. These are the employees being reclassified on 1 October 2026.

The support services stream covers receptionists, medical administration staff, practice assistants, dental assistants and pathology collectors. This stream was not left alone, but it was dealt with earlier and on a different timetable (see below).

Two things practices routinely get wrong here. First, nurses are generally not on this award; they are usually covered by the Nurses Award 2020, which is a separate instrument with its own rates. Second, the award applies by the work performed, not by the job title on the contract, so calling someone a "practice coordinator" does not settle which classification they sit in.

What already changed for dental assistants and pathology collectors?

If you employ dental assistants or pathology collectors, a change has already happened and you may not have actioned it.

The December 2025 decision finalised those two occupations separately, and the Fair Work Ombudsman confirms that a new classification structure operated for them from 1 April 2026. A new Schedule J (Classification Translation Arrangements) was added to the award, setting out exactly which new support services level each existing employee moves to, based on their previous level, their qualifications and their industry experience. The first pay increase applied from the first full pay period on or after 1 April 2026, and some employees receive a further increase from 1 January 2027.

The Commission set the first-stage increases at around 4 per cent for most, but higher where the translation jumps further: 7.95 per cent for an employee moving from Level 1 to Level 3, and 9.26 per cent for Level 2 to Level 6 (which applies to dental assistants with more than four years of experience). Employees already on a rate higher than the new minimum on 31 March 2026 keep their higher rate.

The practical point: this deadline has passed. If you employ dental assistants or pathology collectors and you have not run the Schedule J translation, you are potentially underpaying now, and the shortfall is accruing.

The timetable at a glance

How do you translate an employee into the new classification?

The new health professional structure is built on qualifications and experience rather than job titles, so the translation follows a defined path.

Level 1 is the entry level. It is anchored to the standard minimum qualification for each profession, which the award now sets out in Schedule B by reference to an Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) level. A graduate physiotherapist entering the profession with an AQF Level 7 qualification, for example, is a Level 1 employee. Progression within Level 1 is tied to accumulated experience, with the decision using a threshold of 1,824 hours of similar experience for advancement.

Above that, the structure separates employees by the actual work and the depth of experience behind it. Level 2.1 applies to an employee with less than five years of experience in the profession performing the relevant roles and duties, and Level 2.2 to an employee with five years or more.

So the raw material you need for each employee is: the qualification they hold (and its AQF level), their years of experience in the profession, and an honest description of the roles and duties they actually perform. That last one is where a stale position description becomes a liability, because if the document says one thing and the work is another, the award follows the work.

What should a practice do before 1 October 2026?

Treat this as a project with a deadline, not a payroll parameter change. A workable sequence:

1. List every employee covered by MA000027, separating the health professional stream from support services. Confirm your nurses are on the correct award and are not sitting on this one by accident.
2. Collect the evidence for each person: qualification held, AQF level, years of experience in the profession, and the duties actually performed. This is precisely the information the Commission said employers would need time to gather.
3. Map each employee to the new level using Schedule B (standard minimum qualifications) and the new classification criteria.
4. Run the dental assistant and pathology collector translations under Schedule J now, if you have not. That change is already live from 1 April 2026 and back-pay accrues.
5. Check your payroll system will apply the new levels and rates from the first full pay period on or after 1 October 2026, not from 1 October itself. Those are different dates for most practices.
6. Document the reasoning for each classification decision, and keep it. If a classification is ever queried, the contemporaneous record of why you placed someone at a level is your defence.
7. Diarise the recurring dates: 1 January 2027 for the support services second stage, then 30 June each year from 2027 to 2030.

The step-by-step version of this exercise is in our guide on how to audit your award classifications.

What happens if you get it wrong?

Underpayments are recoverable by employees for up to six years, so a classification error found in 2030 reaches back to 2024. Since 1 January 2025, intentional underpayment has been a criminal offence under the Fair Work Act. And a misclassification is not a small error: moving someone one level down the structure is a permanent discount on every hour they work.

The enforcement posture is not theoretical for medical practices. On 2 February 2026 the Fair Work Ombudsman announced that the Federal Circuit and Family Court had imposed penalties totalling $36,000 on the former operators of Well Health Medical Hub in Merrylands, western Sydney: $30,000 against Well Health Medical Services Pty Ltd and $6,000 against its sole director, Irfan Khan.

The breach was not the underpayment itself, it was ignoring the paperwork. A Fair Work inspector issued a compliance notice in December 2023 after forming the belief the company had underpaid a full-time registered nurse (employed from October 2020 to September 2023) her minimum wages and annual leave loading under the Nurses Award 2020, had not paid out her accrued annual leave, and had not paid her for the last 46 hours she worked. The company did not comply with the notice. Judge Peter Papadopoulos found the failure was deliberate, that Mr Khan was an "intentional participant" in the breach, and that neither had shown any contrition. The court also ordered the company to do what the notice required anyway, including back-pay plus superannuation and interest.

Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth said employers who fail to act on compliance notices should be aware they can face court-imposed penalties on top of having to comply with the notice.

That case ran on the Nurses Award rather than MA000027, so it is not a classification case. It is included here because it is the clearest recent signal of what happens to a general practice that treats an award obligation as optional administration. The same regulator, the same court, and a far larger reclassification exercise now falls due on 1 October. For the broader pattern of how award misconfiguration turns into a multi-million dollar liability, see our analysis of the 2026 payroll underpayment enforceable undertakings.

Are the new dollar rates final?

Not yet, and this matters for how you sequence the work. At paragraph [97] of the May 2026 decision, the Commission said a determination would be published following the Annual Wage Review 2026, in order to incorporate any changes to the rates of pay that flow from that case.

So the classification structure is settled and the commencement date is settled, but the exact minimum rates attached to each level can still shift with the annual wage review outcome. The sensible order of work is therefore: do the classification mapping now, because it is the slow part and it does not depend on the final figures, then load the rates into payroll as soon as the determination publishes. Check the rates against the Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay and Conditions Tool and the award itself before your first October pay run rather than relying on a summary.

One caution on secondary sources: the Fair Work Ombudsman's own summary page for this award was last updated on 1 April 2026 and still describes the health professional classifications as something the Commission is "still considering". That was true then and is not true now. Work from the decision and the award.

Frequently Asked Questions

When exactly do the new Health Professionals Award rates apply?

From the first full pay period starting on or after 1 October 2026, not from 1 October itself. For most practices those are different dates. If your pay cycle starts on a Monday, for example, the new classifications and rates apply from the first pay period beginning on or after 1 October, so the last September cycle runs out on the old rates.

Does this change affect nurses in my practice?

Generally no. Nurses are usually covered by the Nurses Award 2020, a separate award with its own rates and classifications, not the Health Professionals and Support Services Award. The 1 October 2026 change applies to the health professional stream of MA000027 (physiotherapists, psychologists, occupational therapists, dietitians and similar). Confirm which award each employee is actually on before you start mapping.

What is a classification translation and why does it matter?

A translation is the mapping of an existing employee from their current award level to the correct level under the new structure, based on their qualification, experience and the duties they actually perform. It matters because the Fair Work Commission expressly delayed commencement to 1 October 2026 so employers could do it. A wrong translation means an underpayment that accrues every pay cycle.

I employ dental assistants. Have I already missed a deadline?

Possibly. Dental assistants and pathology collectors were finalised in the December 2025 decision and their new classification structure took effect on 1 April 2026, with translations set out in Schedule J of the award. If you have not applied those translations, you may be underpaying now, and a further increase for some employees follows on 1 January 2027. Run that mapping before you turn to the October change.

How much are the pay increases?

The health professional increases phase in over five approximately equal stages twelve months apart, beginning with an initial 5 per cent increase from 1 October 2026 and continuing from 30 June in each of 2027 to 2030. The exact dollar rates per level are not final: the Commission said a further determination would follow the Annual Wage Review 2026. Map classifications now and confirm rates against the award before your first October pay run.

What records should I keep of my classification decisions?

For each employee, keep the qualification evidence (including its AQF level), the record of relevant experience, a current position description reflecting the duties actually performed, and a short note of why you placed them at the level you did. If a classification is ever challenged, whether by an employee or a Fair Work inspector, that contemporaneous reasoning is what you rely on.