In recognition that many general practices, Aboriginal Medical Services and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations have been adversely affected by devastating bushfires across many parts of the country, the Department of Health has undertaken work to implement a number of temporary measures under the Practice Incentives Program (PIP) and Practice Nurse Incentive Program (PNIP)/Workforce Incentive Program (WIP) to assist those practices that have been impacted.

These measures are designed to make it easier for those practices that have suffered direct fire damage, or have been indirectly economically impacted following the bushfires, to recover and to continue providing quality care to their communities. 

Given this, for the PIP payment quarter 1 November 2019 to 31 January 2020, the Department can advise that for those practices located within bushfire affected regions that were compliant with requirements in the previous 1 August to 31 October 2019 payment quarter and which were unable to meet the requirements this payment quarter, payments will proceed as usual.

This means that:

• For practices participating in the PIP Quality Improvement (QI) Incentive, Primary Health Networks (PHNs) have been advised to inform the Department if a practice has been unable to submit their PIP Eligible Data Set data as a result of the bushfires. These practices will receive a PIP QI payment for the 1 November 2019 to 31 January 2020 quarter.

• For practices participating in the PIP Electronic Health (eHealth) Incentive, practices that uploaded the required number of shared health summaries last quarter and were not able to meet the requirements for the current quarter, will receive a PIP eHealth payment for the 1 November 2019 to 31 January 2020 quarter. If a practice paid under this arrangement is found to have not complied with the number of uploads required, the Department will consider an exemption request taking into account the impact of fire on the practice. 

• For PNIP/WIP, practices that previous submitted their November 2019 quarterly confirmation statement, and were not able to submit their quarterly confirmation statement this quarter (due 31 January 2020) will be paid. The hours used for the calculation of payment will be the hours recorded for the November 2019 quarter.

To find out more information about which local government areas (LGAs) are identified as bushfire affected, please refer to the Australian Government’s Disaster Assist website.

Fortunately, most PIP payments will proceed automatically without a practice needing to perform any additional input aside from making MBS item claims – PIP incentives that are tied to MBS item claims will proceed as per normal. 

Further, the Department also recognises that the bushfires may have impacted processes that practices undergo to ensure accreditation (as either the practice has been damaged in such a way that they may no longer possess accreditation, or the accreditation process/renewal process was stymied due to the bushfires). The Department, alongside the Department of Human Services and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care will consider accreditation issues experienced by practices on a case by case basis.

The Department, in partnership with other Australian Government agencies, PHNs and key health sector stakeholders to continue to monitor the bushfire situation, in the interest of ensuring that these practices can be supported in delivering quality primary care across Australia.