Practice Incentives Program

Practice Incentives Program 

The Practice Incentives Program (PIP) encourages general practices to continue providing quality care, enhance their capacity, and improve access and health outcomes for patients.

Seven separate incentives are available:

• After Hours Incentive
• eHealth Incentive
• Indigenous Health Incentive
• Procedural General Practitioner Payment
• Quality Improvement Incentive
• Rural Loading Incentive
• Teaching Payment

In order to apply for individual incentives, you must participate in the PIP. You can apply for individual incentives at the same time or after you apply for PIP.

Resources and eLearning

• PIP Guidelines (Resource)
• Incentives Program (eLearning)
• Practice Incentives (eLearning)
• What is the Practice Incentives Program? (fact sheet)
• Update your practice details for PIP

Practice Incentives Program eligibility criteria

To be eligible to participate in the PIP, a general practice must meet all of the following requirements:

• meet the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) definition of a general practice.
• meet the PIP definition of an open practice (where one or more registered medical practitioners provide face-to-face medical or health services to patients at a physical location).
• maintain at least $10 million in public liability insurance cover for the main location and each additional practice location (legal liability is not public liability).
• make sure all general practitioners and nurse practitioners have professional indemnity insurance cover.
• be accredited, or registered for accreditation, as a general practice against the RACGP Standards for general practices  by an agency approved under the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme. Accreditation must cover the entire quarter the practice is applying in and be maintained thereafter. Practices must be registered for and achieve accreditation against the RACGP Standards within 12 months of joining the PIP Program.
• You can download a copy (current at September 2019) of the Practice Incentives Program Guidelines by clicking here (please note: this is a Word document).

Resources

• PIP Guidelines (Resource- word document)
• The National General Practice Accreditation Scheme

How to Apply for the Practice Incentives Program

You can apply for the PIP and individual incentives online or using a form.

Online applications are through Health Professional Online Services (HPOS) using your Provider Digital Access (PRODA) account. If you don’t have one, register for PRODA online.

For further information on how to apply for PIP click here.

Resources and eLearning

• Apply for the Practice Incentives Program
• Practice Incentives Program forms 
• Application online simulator (eLearning)

This incentive is to support general practices to provide their patients with appropriate access to after hours care.

As much as possible, patients should be encouraged and supported to receive care from their regular GP.

However, when a patient’s regular GP or practice is not available, they should be encouraged to access a service provider who has an agreement with the practice to provide care during the after-hours period. This supports safe and high-quality patient care by facilitating continuity of care and timely handover of clinical patient information. The Practice Incentives Program (PIP) After Hours Incentive supports GPs to provide their patients with appropriate access to after-hours care.

Resources and eLearning

• After Hours Incentive guidelines (Resource – word doc)
• A guide to establishing an agreement between your practice and a provider (Guide)
• PIP After Hours Incentive (Factsheet)

The Practice Incentives Program (PIP) eHealth Incentive aims to encourage general practices to keep up to date with the latest developments in digital health and adopt new digital health technology as it becomes available. It aims to help practices improve administration processes and patient care.

To be eligible for the PIP eHealth Incentive, practices must be registered in the PIP and meet each of the five eligibility requirements below.

1. Integrating healthcare identifiers into electronic practice records
2. Secure messaging capability
3. Data records and clinical coding
4. Electronic transfer of prescriptions
5. My Health Record system

Resources and eLearning

• eHealth Incentive guidelines (Resource – word doc)
• eHealth Incentive (FactSheet)
• eHealth Incentive (Resources and simulators)
• eHealth Incentive eligibility requirements 
• My Health record security and access (Checklist)
• My Health Record Policy (Template – word doc)
• Agreement to access the My Health Record (Template – word doc)
• Secure Messaging Capability Policy (Template – word doc)
• Data Records and Coding Policy (Template – word doc)
• Electronic transfer of Prescriptions Policy (Template – word doc)

The Practice Incentives Program – Indigenous Health Incentive (PIP IHI) provides payments to health services to provide better care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living with a chronic disease.

Chronic disease is responsible for 66% of the health gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-Indigenous Australians. The PIP IHI seeks to address this gap with better chronic disease management for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Resources and eLearning

• Practice Incentives Program – Indigenous Health Incentive (Guidelines)
• Changes to Practice Incentives Program – Indigenous Health Incentive (Fact sheet)
• Indigenous Health incentive (resources and simulators)
• Patient registration form
• Indigenous Health Services (Resources and simulators)

The Procedural General Practitioner Payment is an incentive to encourage general practitioners (GPs) in rural and remote areas to maintain local access to surgical, anaesthetic and obstetric services.

Procedural general practitioners (GPs) provide non-referred procedural services in a hospital theatre, maternity care setting or other appropriately equipped facility, which in urban areas would normally be a specific referral based specialty.

Resources and eLearning

• Procedural General Practitioner Payment (Guidelines)
• Procedural GP Payment (Fact Sheet)

The Practice Incentives Program (PIP) Quality Improvement (QI) Incentive is a payment to general practices that participate in quality improvement to improve patient outcomes and deliver best practice care.

Under the PIP QI Incentive, general practices work with their local Primary Health Network (PHN) to undertake continuous quality improvement activities through the collection and review of practice data on specified Improvement Measures.

A general practice will need to meet two components to qualify for a PIP QI Incentive payment.

1. Participation in continuous quality improvement activities.
2. PIP Eligible Data Set

For a comprehensive understanding of PIP QI and how WAPHA can support your practice please refer to the Quality Improvement Toolkit.

Resources and eLearning

• Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement Incentive (Guidelines)
• Quality Improvement Measures (Fact sheet)
• Quality Improvement Incentive – User guide for general practices (Fact sheet)
• Quality Improvement Toolkit

Practices participating in the PIP, with a main practice located outside capital cities and other major metropolitan centres, are automatically paid a rural loading. The rural loading recognises the difficulties of providing care, often with little professional support, in rural and remote areas.

You don’t need to apply for this incentive. Rural loading is automatically applied to the PIP payments of practices in rural and remote areas.

To be eligible for the PIP rural loading, the main practice location must:

• participate in the PIP, and
• be located in RRMA 3 –7

Resources and eLearning

• Rural Loading PIP (Guidelines)
• Rural Loading Incentive Payment (Fact sheet)

Payment to encourage general practices to provide teaching sessions to undergraduate and graduate medical students preparing to enter the Australian medical profession.

For further information on eligibility and claiming teaching sessions please refer to the Teaching Payment guidelines.

You don’t need to apply for this incentive, but you’ll need to tell notify the number of teaching sessions hosted by your practice to claim the payment.

Resources and eLearning

• Teaching payment (Guidelines)
• Teaching Payment (Fact sheet)