Has our general practice moved a step closer to the British NHS?

It has always been clear the PIP redesign was going to occur regardless of the opinion of GP groups, with increasing departmental control the likeliest outcome

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In 2019, the Department of Health, via its practice incentive scheme, will not only start setting the key performance indicators of general practice, but also further tighten its grip on practice data.

It is not unlikely that the department’s strategy will create the same issues the National Health Service is currently encountering: loss of patient-centeredness of care, unreasonable KPIs and low doctor morale.

The redesign of the Practice Incentive Program (PIP) has been on the cards for a while. The introduction of a new quality improvement (QI) payment system was deferred for 12 months in May 2018 because of concerns that it was not fit for purpose.

Central role of PHNs

If it goes ahead in May 2019, the impact of the new scheme will be significant. The big change will likely be that Primary Health Networks (PHNs) become exclusive “QI providers” for general practice. This means that they will extract, analyse and store practice data and present GPs with benchmark reports. Many PHNs have already started collecting data in anticipation of the changes.

To be eligible for quality improvement incentive payments, practices will have to demonstrate to PHNs that their performance is on par with the department’s KPIs. Although analysis and benchmarking of clinical data are becoming increasingly important to improve patient care, there are many issues with the proposed PIP overhaul.

Initially, there was talk about more organisations becoming QI providers, such as the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) and the Improvement Foundation, but, according to Medical Observer, it looks like there will be no profession-led alternative to the PHN model and, as a result, practices will not be given a choice of QI providers.

General practice is at risk of gradually losing control over its quality improvement processes, which will no doubt leave many grassroots GPs dismayed.

Professional buy-in?

The main issue with the scheme is related to professional buy-in. The Department of Health has gone through the usual process of consulting the profession, but it has always been clear that the PIP redesign was going to occur regardless of the opinion of GP groups.

The department may claim in its communications that the KPIs are supported by the various professional bodies, but the level of engagement, trust and satisfaction with the new QI system will be low for various reasons.

First, this is an example of a top-down government solution, largely designed by the Department of Health. As we have seen with the My Health Record and Health Care Homes, this approach usually creates just as many problems as it is trying to fix.

Similarly, there has been a lack of engagement with the e-health PIP (ePIP) scheme, which requires practices to upload shared health summaries to the My Health Record to remain eligible for incentive payments or ePIP. This may have given the department a countable number of uploads, but there is no evidence to suggest that it has improved meaningful use of the My Health Record or quality of care in general practice.

Weak evidence

In the PIP redesign process, only payments to practices have survived. For example, the aged care incentive payment to GPs providing care to patients in residential aged care facilities will be scrapped. This incentive is worth $3000–$5000 per doctor. Many have argued that it is incomprehensible that funding benefitting aged care is removed at a time when residential aged care facilities need more support to provide the medical care required.

By stopping these service payments to individual doctors, the incentives will be one step further removed from those who are responsible for the actual quality improvement activities. Again, this does not inspire confidence in the department’s new QI system.

Measuring performance against KPIs in combination with performance payments will almost certainly create new problems. Quality indicators used by governments around the world are often easy to measure isolated parameters that have limited value for complex systems such as general practice.

The evidence to support financial incentives is weak, and the British Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) pay-for-performance system has illustrated what can go wrong: QOF has not improved care but did result in the loss of the patient-centredness of care and has created a significant decrease in doctor morale.

No funding priority

The new QI PIP will be subsidised by a shift of funding from other PIP and SIP incentives — which has been labelled as “robbing Peter to pay Paul” by the Australian Medical Association. In 2016, $21 million was removed from the PIP budget to partially fund the Health Care Home trials. The last budget announcements made it clear that there will be no increase in PIP funding in the near future. The PIP scheme, introduced in the 1990s, has never been indexed.

The Department of Health has not yet provided clarity on what the PIP scheme will look like beyond May 2019. This lack of transparency about long-term planning creates uncertainty for practices. Although the expectations will start off low, it is to be expected that the department will adjust the KPIs upwards over time, wanting more for less.

One of the PIP eligibility criteria for practices is accreditation against the RACGP’s Standards for general practices, and it will be interesting to see if upcoming changes to the PIP scheme will affect the percentage of practices that take the effort to go through the accreditation process.

Data extraction

Finally, general practice is not only facing loss of control of quality improvement but is also about to miss out on an opportunity to become custodians of its clinical data. Although the QI PIP data will be extracted from GP practices, it will likely be managed and controlled by PHNs and other government agencies, such as the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

When the government defunded the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) study in 2016, general practice lost its most important longitudinal source of data. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what will happen with the QI PIP data when, in a future reform cycle, PHNs or other government agencies involved are subject to funding cuts or cease to exist altogether.

The Department of Health’s underlying thinking seems to be that the responsibility for quality and data should be taken away from the profession, even though the government’s own data governance practices don’t always inspire confidence.

Professional response

The department should have given professional organisations the responsibility to execute a mutually agreed strategy, acceptable to all parties, including custodianship of data for quality improvement purposes.

Our peak bodies are working hard behind the scenes to negotiate the best possible outcome. It is more important than ever for the profession to work through any differences and present a united front.

The question remains, can we stem the tide of increasing departmental control or has general practice definitely moved one step closer to the NHS?

This article was originally published in MJA Insight.