The MyMedicare General Practice in Aged Care Incentive has officially celebrated its first birthday, but that doesn’t mean some GPs aren’t already hoping for its demise.
The first dedicated MyMedicare incentive payment has received a bad review from general practice, according to a new report published by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.
According to the ‘early insights’ document “GPs and practices expressed dissatisfaction with the incentive”, particularly around the administrative complexity of the scheme.
“Few GPs and practices surveyed had accessed the available information kits, and among those who did, many found them insufficiently useful or relevant to their operational needs,” the report said.
“PHNs, which play a key role in supporting practices, reported delays in receiving funding and unclear expectations regarding their role.
“This constrained their ability to provide timely and targeted support to general practices during the early rollout phase.”
AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen told The Medical Republic that the association had provided feedback to DoHDA outlining members’ concerns with the program.
“The early review of [the new aged care incentive] is showing dissatisfaction amongst GPs, and from an AMA perspective we think a fair bit of that was fairly predictable,” she said.
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“We had warned in the design phase of this program and the early implementation that, particularly for smaller practices only seeing a few patients in aged care, the admin burden of this new program was excessive.
“The remuneration really didn’t balance out with what we know is quite difficult and time-consuming work to see a few patients in aged care.”
The General Practice in Aged Care Incentive program replaced the Practice Incentive Program – GP Aged Care Access Initiative from July 2024.
Patients, practices and GPs must be enrolled in voluntary enrolment system MyMedicare to participate.
The payments are $300 per patient per year paid to the responsible GP and $130 per patient per year paid to the practice, plus rural loading.
The minimum servicing requirements are 10 services over 12 months.
These must include two care planning services and eight regular services that occur in separate calendar months, with at least two regular services per quarter.
While it may not be winning any popularity contests, this is one area in which the new incentive has performed relatively well compared to its predecessor; total eligible care planning services rose by 25% in the six months following the introduction of the MyMedicare payment.
“It just shows that there are some GPs who are working hard to meet the program’s requirements, which includes doing some care planning,” Dr McMullen said.
In terms of uptake, there were around 82,000 aged care residents registered with the incentive by November 2024, at which point about $14.3 million had been disbursed as part of the program.
