MyMedicare’s success relies on the popularity of PIPs and WIPs. Might have been a good shout to check how those were going before rolling it out.
The Practice and Workforce Incentive Programs (PIP and WIP) are undergoing a rapid review to judge their effectiveness, even though the Department of Health and Aged Care has already outlined its vision for the future of blended payment models for chronic disease care.
Big-four consulting firm KPMG opened the DoHAC-ordered review last week, as part of ongoing work related to the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce Report released in February of this year.
One of the headline recommendations to come out of that report was to introduce more blended funding models, integrated with fee-for-service, to support GPs in managing complex chronic disease.
“General practice incentive payment programs should be better targeted and simplified to more effectively incentivise innovation, and to deliver high-quality models of multidisciplinary team-based care with measurable quality care and health outcome improvements,” the report said.
It put forward voluntary patient registration as a model that could “support better continuity of care, a strengthened relationship between the patient and their care team, and more integrated, person-centred care”.
In practice, MyMedicare won’t be wholly dissimilar to the PIP and WIP.
The PIP payment for aged care, for example, will be straight-up replaced by a MyMedicare incentive for aged care from July next year.
There are also plans for a new, MyMedicare-only incentive payment to provide blended funding for patients who are frequently admitted to hospital.
At this stage, the only other incentive for GPs, patients or practices to sign up to MyMedicare is the ability to access long telephone and video consult items.
With incentive payments forming the backbone of MyMedicare’s future, then, it seems important to work out just how well the current incentive payment schemes – i.e. the WIP and the PIP – actually run.
Which is what KPMG are now doing… almost two months after MyMedicare opened its virtual doors.
The KPMG review will “assess the effectiveness of the current general practice incentives and examine areas for enhancement into the future” over four domains: impact, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability.
It’s now open for input from GPs, practice managers, practice owners, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services, Primary Health Networks (PHNs), professional organisations and peak bodies.
There’s the option to either complete a survey or provide a written submission, so long as it comes in before midnight on Friday, 22 December.
General practices across 16 PHNs will also have the chance to participate in workshops on the topic sometime this month.
