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May 2009

We are running a regionally focused and targeted communication campaign to promote Medicare electronic claiming to Medicare cardholders. If your practice is in one of the targeted areas, you will receive a letter to inform you about the messages we are delivering locally.

For more information about patient claiming through Medicare Online and Medicare Easyclaim call 1800 700 199 to talk to one of our Business Development Officers.

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Practice Incentives Program (PIP) - Information Management/Information Technology (IM/IT) Incentive

The PIP IM/IT Incentive arrangements, implemented in November 2006, aims to encourage practices to implement more secure IT practice systems and electronic patient health records to facilitate efficient and widespread information transfer and storage. Accurate and complete medical documentation is essential for supporting good clinical care and ensuring good communication between health providers, allowing them to respond quickly to patient needs to benefit both consumers and providers.

The PIP is designed to encourage change that supports quality care, and reward general practices which implement such strategies. The PIP IM/IT arrangements, developed and agreed in close consultation with the general practice profession, aim to encourage and reward general practices to take the next step towards enhanced use of electronic patient records.

Payments are made to PIP practices on a quarterly basis with other PIP practice payments.

PIP IM/IT Incentive aims to encourage practices to maintain electronic health records and implement more secure IM/IT practice systems in order to facilitate efficient and widespread information transfer and storage.

To be eligible for the PIP IM/IT Incentive, the practice must:

  • Participate in the PIP; and
  • Meet the requirements of the Tier for which the practice is applying.

There are two levels of IM/IT activity recognised under the PIP IM/IT Incentive; Tier 1 (Basic) and Tier 2 (Enhanced). For more information on payments visit the PIP Payments and calculations page.

The IM/IT Incentive will be replaced by the PIP eHealth Incentive and will commence from August 2009.

Use of electronic patient records to record allergies/sensitivities

Practices must be able to demonstrate that the majority of their active patients have an electronic record that includes documented allergies/sensitivities or an entry indicating that an assessment of allergies/sensitivities has been made by the doctor.

While it is important to record all allergies, it is particularly important to record allergies to medicines as this facilitates safer prescribing and reduces the likelihood of adverse patient outcomes.

It is also important to record ‘no known allergies’ and not to have this as an assumption in the absence of recorded data. This is consistent with the RACGP Standards for General Practices.

All alerts judged significant by the doctor should be recorded and reviewed regularly.

IM/IT security

Practices must also implement appropriate information security measures. These include virus protection, firewall, backup and recovery, access control and practice procedures/processes to support/maintain appropriate information security.

The practice must also use encryption systems or recognised secure messaging systems when patient information and/or clinical data are transferred electronically.

A Security Self Assessment tool (SSA) has been developed to assist practices to comply with the requirements and also may be used by Medicare Australia to assess compliance at audit.

The SSA outlines the technical and organisational activities required for practices to meet the security requirements of the PIP IM/IT Incentive and may assist to protect practices from legal and ethical problems relating to their patient data.

More information about the new requirements is provided in the guidelines and questions and answers sheet. An SSA tool is also available to assist practices to comply with these requirements.

IM/IT documents

Information on the use of electronic health records and information security measures is available from the following links:

Some documents on this page may require the free Adobe PDF reader.

Last updated: 19 February, 2009