Last updated: March 2026

If your child has been on a waitlist for specialist assessment, the recent news out of Victoria may have caught your attention. GPs — including your own — will soon be able to diagnose and prescribe for ADHD. It is being framed as good news. For the most part, it is. But it is worth understanding what these reforms actually involve before adjusting your expectations about what’s coming.

These changes are being driven by a clear problem: demand for ADHD assessment and treatment has risen sharply, while access to specialist services has not kept pace. Long waitlists, high out-of-pocket costs, and geographical inequity have left many children, adolescents, and adults without timely care. Enabling trained GPs to play a greater role has the potential to improve access, continuity, and community-based support.

What Victoria is actually changing

The Victorian Government has announced reforms planned for 2026 that will allow GPs to diagnose and treat ADHD in children and adults aged six years and over (Victorian Government, 2024), provided they complete accredited training and practise within defined prescribing and monitoring frameworks. The intent is not unrestricted prescribing. It is a structured expansion of scope for appropriately trained clinicians working within a system that sets clear limits around patient eligibility, dosing, and ongoing review.

How other states have already moved

Victoria is not the first. Queensland has long supported GP involvement in ADHD prescribing under defined frameworks (Queensland Health, 2024). Western Australia has expanded shared-care and continuation prescribing arrangements (WA Department of Health, 2024). New South Wales has introduced pathways allowing trained GPs to manage stable patients and is progressing broader endorsed prescriber models (NSW ACI, 2024).

Each state has taken a somewhat different approach to the mechanics, but the direction is consistent: structured expansion of GP scope within defined clinical frameworks, with specialist oversight retained for complexity.

What trained GPs will and won’t be doing

While details vary by state, common requirements across these frameworks include formal accredited training, clear patient eligibility criteria, defined dose limits, ongoing monitoring protocols, and referral pathways for presentations that exceed GP scope. These reforms emphasise shared care rather than full transfer of responsibility. Specialists remain central to the picture, particularly for presentations that are diagnostically uncertain or involve significant clinical complexity.

This is not a model where any GP can write a stimulant prescription after a brief appointment. The training requirements and regulatory frameworks are designed specifically to prevent that.

Where specialists remain central

Specialists are not being replaced by these reforms. Their role becomes more focused: diagnostic complexity and uncertainty, significant comorbidity, treatment resistance or adverse effects, and medico-legal, safeguarding, or high-risk presentations. This redistribution of care can improve system efficiency while preserving specialist input where it is most clinically valuable (RANZCP, 2024).

Put differently: if a child’s presentation is straightforward, a trained GP working within the new framework may be well-placed to help. If the picture is complicated — layered comorbidities, diagnostic uncertainty, a history that doesn’t fit cleanly — specialist assessment remains the appropriate pathway.

Why assessment quality still matters

Improved access is a genuine positive. Access alone, however, is not enough.

ADHD does not exist in isolation. Many conditions can mimic or coexist with ADHD symptoms — including depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, trauma-related presentations, intellectual developmental disorders, and specific learning difficulties (Australian ADHD Clinical Practice Guideline, 2022). A symptom checklist completed in a single appointment is not sufficient to distinguish between them.

A thorough ADHD assessment requires careful developmental history, collateral information across settings, screening for comorbid mental health conditions, consideration of trauma and psychosocial context, and assessment of cognitive and learning profiles where indicated. Treating ADHD without recognising these factors risks misdiagnosis, inappropriate prescribing, or missed opportunities for more effective interventions (Australian Prescriber, 2022).

The value of a thorough assessment extends well beyond its cost. Getting the diagnosis right supports safer prescribing, better long-term outcomes, appropriate educational and workplace accommodations, and reduced downstream healthcare and psychosocial burden.

Pandion Health supports reforms that improve access to ADHD care within the community. At the same time, quality and evidence-based assessment must remain at the forefront of gold-standard care. The goal is not simply more diagnoses or faster prescriptions, but earlier, safer, and more effective care that recognises the full complexity of neurodevelopmental and mental health presentations across the lifespan.