Some member practices may have received correspondence regarding failure to comply with the guidelines of the Procedural Practice Incentive Payment (PIP).

It has been identified that due to the Commonwealth Government not being able to access public hospital data in most States, GP and Rural Generalist Procedural Practices who may have met their required targets have received these letters.

ACRRM will work with other stakeholders and the Department to address this issue for future compliance activity, however for this process the following steps can be taken by the practices:

1. Review the eligible procedural work for the period nominated in the correspondence.
2. You must have full confidence your practice has met its self nominated threshold of activity for each GP/RG (note you may need to increase or decrease the threshold you have nominated as part of the Procedural PIP).
3. Write to the Department of Health as instructed and advise what your situation is:
   • Have met the threshold – provide a number of procedures for the practice and procedural GPs, may not be exactly accurate, but have full confidence that it is an accurate description of the number of procedures the staff at your practice have undertaken.
   • You do not need to provide a line by line detail of the procedures delivered by your practice GPs/RGs.
   • Advise in the correspondence why  you appear not to have met the target, by providing  examples of deliveries eg In (town/hospital name) our practice procedural staff (2 GP obstet) have delivered over 35 babies (with more than 10 each) in the period and continued to be on the after-hours roster. Well over 90% of this work is done through the combined public hospital roster and therefore there is no related Medicare data. Our GP anaesthetist meets tier 2 requirements, with 12 anaesthetic procedures performed in the period and continued participation on the after-hours roster.

The Department has also provided the following information:

If your practice has not met the Procedural PIP eligibility criteria for Tier 3 and or Tier 4 payments, you will need to complete the Voluntary Acknowledgement of Incorrect Payment form and schedule, and send it to voluntary.compliance.team@health.gov.au for processing. The amount owing to the Commonwealth will be recalculated based on the correct payment tier and rural loading.

If there are changes to your practice's eligibility status for the Procedural PIP payments for 2021, take this opportunity to notify Services Australia at pip@servicesaustralia.gov.au or opt out via HPOS at least 7 days before the relevant point in time date to avoid overpayment.

Please contact voluntary.compliance.team@health.gov.au at the Department of Health if you require any assistance with this compliance activity.

The College also welcomes feedback from members.  Please provide this to: policy@acrrm.org.au