The Practice Incentives Program (PIP) was developed to provide incentives to encourage general practice to improve the quality of care provided to patients.
Whether you’ve owned a practice for some time or you’re just starting out, our guide to PIP programs should help you get a better handle on each incentive.
PIP incentives consists of 11 individual payments designed to support activities of general practice including improvements, enhanced capacity, and improved access for patients.
What are the Different Practice Incentives Programs?
The difference practice incentives programs are:
- Asthma Incentive – aims to encourage GPs to more effectively manage the clinical care of patients with moderate to severe asthma.
- After Hours Incentive – supports general practices which provide their patients with appropriate access to after hours care.
- Cervical Screening Incentive – encourages GPS to increase overall screening rates.
- Diabetes Incentive – encourages GPS to provide earlier diagnosis of diabetes and more effectively manage patients with established diabetes mellitus.
- eHealth Incentive – encourages practices to adopt new digital health technology and improve administration processes.
- General Practitioner Aged Care Access – encourages GPs to provide increased and continuing services in aged care facilities which are funded by the Australian Government.
- Indigenous Health – supports health services to provide better care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients including best practice management of chronic disease.
- Procedural General Practitioner Payment – encourages GPs in rural and remote areas to maintain local access to surgical, anaesthetic and obstetric services.
- Quality Prescribing – encourages practices to keep up to date with information on the quality use of medicines and medical tests.
- Rural Loading – for practices in remote areas.
- Teaching Payment – encourages general practices to provide teaching sessions to undergraduate and graduate medical students.
How Do These Programs Work?
To be eligible to participate in the Practice Incentive Programs, a practice must be accredited or registered for accreditation under the Standards for General Practices of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACP).
Anyone registered for PIP can apply to receive incentives but practices must maintain full accreditation to continue to be eligible. PIP incentive payments are mainly dependent on practice size in terms of patients seen.
The Practice Incentives Program is administered by the Department of Human Services and there are three types of PIP payments. Service incentive payments such as asthma, diabetes and aged care access are made to GPs to a nominated account. The majority of PIP payments are made to practices each quarter via electronic funds transfer as long as the practice meets the eligibility criteria.
In the 2016/17 Federal Budget it was announced the Australian Government will redesign the Practice Incentives Program by introducing a new Quality Improvement Incentive to encourage improved detection and management of a range of chronic conditions, and to focus on issues specific to the population of general practices.
Further information about each PIP incentive can be obtained from the Department of Human Services.