The Department of Health and Aged Care is tasking primary health networks (PHNs) with getting aged care residents signed up to MyMedicare in advance of the introduction of the General Practice in Aged Care Incentive (GPACI) next year.
PHNs are being asked to work with residential aged care providers to support patient registration, particularly with helping residents and carers to provide informed consent to join the scheme.
PHNs are receiving funding to work with residential aged care facilities (RACFs) to match residents with a regular primary care provider in MyMedicare where they do not have one.
From 2024, PHNs will have will also have access to a needs-based funding pool to commission GPs to provide care in areas of critical workforce shortage or market failure.
Residents have been able to register for MyMedicare since October 1 if they have a valid Medicare card of DVA veteran’s card.
GPs can provide a registration form for the resident to fill out, and they can also register online through Medicare Online account or the Express Plus Medicare app. DoHAC says they don’t have to physically attend a practice to complete the registration.
Patients incapable of providing consent can have a responsible person consent on their behalf.
The encouragement to get residents registered for the scheme comes in advance of the GPACI from August 1, 2024. The incentive, budgeted for $112 million over four years, aims to support every aged care resident to receive quality primary care services from a regular GP and practice.
Health Minister Mark Butler said the incentive will be $300 per patient per year paid quarterly to GPs and $130 per patient per year to the practice. Rural loadings will also apply, and the incentive is on top of normal fee for service provision.
RACF residents will be required to be registered in MyMedicare and the GP to be linked to he patient’s registered practice for GPs to access the incentive, the full details of which have not yet been released.
GPs and practices will receive the incentives for providing registered patients who permanently live in a RACF with regular visits and better care planning.
DoHAC says residential aged care patients who are registered in GPACI will be exempt from the two face-to-face visits eligibility criteria for MyMedicare.
This is an exciting initiative recognising those that would get the most value from a coordinated care plan. The next step is to ensure the GP and RACF clinical systems can talk to each other to ensure a complete record. Ensuring they all use common standards this would be a great example of using FHIR to deliver end user value.
Some of the GPs will actually lose money in this new initiative. Have the government worked on case studies ?