First MyMedicare incentive ready to launch

A new government initiative aimed at bolstering care and planning within aged care is just days away from launching, with the MyMedicare General Practice Aged Care Incentive (GPACI) going live on 1 August.
 
According to the Department of Health and Aged Care (DoHAC), the initiative was designed to ‘make it easier for older people living in residential aged care homes’ to connect with a GP.
 
Under the initiative, GPs must provide eight consultations and two care plans to a residential aged care patient every year to be eligible for a $300 payment.

Additionally, telehealth can only be used in Modified Monash Model (MMM) areas 4–7 for up to four regular visits per year.

While of the eight consultations, only one each quarter can be delivered by a member of the patient’s care team other than the usual GP.
 
The RACGP has been involved in the discussions to design the incentive, flagging concerns with the initiative which could prevent GPs from signing up.
 
Chair of RACGP Specific Interests Aged Care Dr Anthony Marinucci said doctors are not signing up, in part due to a lack of awareness of the program itself.
 
‘They just simply don’t have the time and their administration don’t have the time either,’ Dr Marinucci told newsGP.
 
‘Most doctors in aged care would know about it, and I think they’re the ones that are going to be unfairly punished in this.
 
‘There certainly could be a degree of people that don’t know about it.’
 
RACGP Expert Committee Funding and Health System Reform Chair, Dr Michael Wright, said there was less than one in five GPs going into an aged care facility each month.
 
‘With our ageing population, services provided in aged care facilities need to increase,’ he told newsGP.
 
‘The program also has limited flexibility around timing of visits, whether services can be done by telehealth and requires patients, GPs and practices to be registered with MyMedicare.’
 
A DoHAC spokesperson told newsGP the incentives paid to the GP and practice are in addition to existing fee for-service payments.
 
‘As a new incentive, the department will be monitoring and evaluating the model over three years to track uptake and identify opportunities for improvement,’ they said.
 
‘The evaluation process will involve consulting a range of stakeholders and analysing both quantitative and qualitative data and will identify opportunities for refining program elements.’
 
But to meet the requirement of the GPACI, Dr Marinucci said there are several barriers, including GPs needing to be working within an accredited practice, which will hit hard for a lot of aged care doctors.
 
‘This knocks off a lot of doctors in aged care because [they] work independently,’ Dr Marinucci says.

Then the practice must sign up to MyMedicare, the GP must register as an aged care provider and, finally, consent must be obtained from each patient to sign them up to MyMedicare.
 
The RACGP has previously pointed to the Co-ordinated Veterans Care (CVC) program as an example of a successful general practice-based incentive scheme,
 
It says this is a program which provides practices with a high degree of autonomy and flexibility in how they use the scheme’s funding and significantly higher financial incentives.
 
Dr Marinucci says his has concerns the new initiative will increase legislative requirements on an already overburdened workforce.
 
‘There’s a lot of work outside of consultation that is involved in aged care,’ he said.
 
‘I totally champion the concept of giving us an increased incentive, I think that’s fabulous, but to make it so difficult to access and so easy to actually miss, it’s the wrong way to go about it.’
 
Independent GPs and sole practitioners can complete the MyMedicare registration process with their sole provider organisation information in response to the fields relating to general practice registration in the organisation register.
 
Log in below to join the conversation.

aged care General Practice in Aged Care Incentive GPACI MBS Medicare MyMedicare