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Practice Incentives Program

The Practice Incentives Program (PIP) encourages general practices to continue providing quality care, enhance their capacity, and improve access and health outcomes for patients.

Eight separate incentives are available related to:

  • Eligibility

    To claim PIP payments, practices must:

    • be a general practice as defined by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP)
    • be an open practice as defined by the PIP
    • be accredited, or registered for accreditation, against the RACGP Standards for general practices
    • maintain at least $10 million in public liability insurance cover
    • have professional indemnity insurance cover for all general practitioners and nurse practitioners.

    Payments are managed by Services Australia/Medicare.

PIP QI

Practices that participate in quality improvement to improve patient outcomes and deliver best practice care are eligible for the Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement (PIP QI) Incentive payment.

The PIP QI has two components. Practices must:

  1. Participate in continuous quality improvement
  2. Provide their PIP eligible data set to their local Primary Health Network.
  • How much is the PIP QI payment?

    Eligible practices can receive a maximum payment of $12,500 per quarter, based on $5 per Standardised Whole Patient Equivalent, per year.

  • Eligibility

    To be eligible for the PIP QI payment, general practices in the NWMPHN region must:

    • be eligible to claim PIPs (that is, be accredited or registered for accreditation)
    • register for the PIP QI Incentive through Health Professional Online Services (HPOS)
    • submit their PIP eligible data set to NWMPHN quarterly using the PEN Clinical Audit Tool (also known as CAT4 or PEN CAT). Practices that prefer not to use PEN can upload data directly to the NWMPHN portal
    • undertake continuous quality improvement activities in partnership with NWMHPN.

    Visit our PIP QI – Frequently asked questions page for more information.

Workforce Incentive Program

The Workforce Incentive Program (WIP) replaced the Practice Nurse Incentive Program (PNIP) and the General Practice Rural Incentives Program (GPRIP) from early 2020. Practices already participating in PNIP and GPRIP will automatically transition to WIP.