In just over two months, GP management plans and team care arrangements will be overhauled. We still don’t know what it will look like.
The Department of Health and Aged Care has released new detail on its incoming chronic condition management plan modernisation … but it’s not the detail anyone has been waiting for.
From November, the items for GP management plans and team care arrangement creation and review will cease to exist.
In their place, there will be four new items for GP chronic condition management plans.
DoHAC has now confirmed the new item numbers, but hasn’t said how they will be remunerated – only that the planning and review rebates will be equal to encourage GPs to follow up with patients.
The upshot is that it’s still unclear whether the new items will be worth more or less overall.
With just two months left on the clock, GPs are growing antsy.
AMA president-elect Dr Danielle McMullen told The Medical Republic she had met with Health Minister Mark Butler as recently as last week and emphasised the importance of keeping the overall funding level up.
“It’s been a bit unclear who’s responsible for setting the fees or giving advice on the fees [associated with the new items], and we’ve made strong representations that this can’t be a cut to general practice,” she said.
“Chronic disease funding is important – practices and patients rely on these rebates.”
The other big change is that referral forms for allied health services will no longer be required.
Instead, in an effort to streamline processes, GPs can write a referral letter as they would for another medical specialist.
“The positives are that the government has heard the significant feedback that the team care arrangement red tape is a barrier to patients receiving care, and that … all the many hoops that GPs and their teams have had to jump through for years is a challenge,” Dr McMullen said.
“This is a really streamlined process that basically allows us to provide chronic disease management for people with chronic conditions and support their access to allied health as part of a team.”
Whether the new rebates will represent a net increase or not is a particular issue for rural and remote populations, according to ACRRM president Dr Dan Halliday.
“The rebates that are associated with provision of these services are going to underpin a lot of the health services for our rural, remote and First Nations populations,” Dr Halliday told TMR.
“These vulnerable populations have a higher morbidity, higher mortality and a higher proportion of chronic disease.
“Because these issues are going to disproportionately affect rural, remote and First Nations communities, we would certainly like to see some increased funding associated with the reform.”
GP management plans and team care arrangements that are in place before 1 November will continue to be valid until November 2026.
Related
At that time, it will also become mandatory to have a GP chronic condition management plan to access domiciliary medication management reviews.
Patients who are registered via MyMedicare will only be able to get their plans written at their registered practice.
To get technical, the numbers getting deleted are 229, 230, 721, 723, 92024, 92025, 92055 and 92059.
The new GP item numbers will be 965 for face-to-face preparation of a plan, 92029 for telehealth preparation of a plan, 967 for face-to-face review of a plan and 92030 for telehealth review of a plan.
