One effect of equalising care plan creation and review rebates is that the same care plan can now be reviewed ad infinitum without GPs sacrificing income.
Patients can now theoretically receive a chronic condition management plan that lasts their entire life, rather than needing to be rewritten every 12 months, with GPs not necessarily worse off financially.
Last Thursday evening, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing released a fact sheet containing long-awaited detail on the revamped GP chronic condition management plan items, which are set to go live from 1 July.
One of the main features of the new item set is that the rebate for reviewing a care plan will no longer be lower than the rebate for writing a care plan.
Instead, both will be set at $156.55.
Chronic disease items have long been popular among GPs; while they make up less than 10% of GP attendances billed to Medicare overall, chronic disease items are bulk billed more frequently than any other item group.
As a group, the bulk-billing rate for chronic disease sits at 99.2%.
Technically, GP management plans written under an item 721 are valid indefinitely, so long as they were regularly reviewed.
Under the outgoing system, though, the rebate for reviewing a care plan was roughly half that of the rebate for writing a plan.
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As a result, GPs were incentivised to write an entirely new care plan every year – the minimum claiming period for an item 721 was 12 months – rather than reviewing the existing plan.
But under the incoming system, it will make just as much financial sense for GPs to review a plan as it would to make a new one every 12 months.
The new GP chronic condition management plans do not expire, but will be considered out of date if they were not written or reviewed in the previous 18 months.
RACGP president Dr Michael Wright told The Medical Republic that he would be trying to make the most out of the changes.
“It almost does fit into your normal workflow, in that you have an updated care plan and every three months you go back and update it,” he said.
“Why do you need to write a new one when there’s no incentive to – it’s the same rebate whether you do a new one or a review.
“You have one plan, and that’s the plan and you can keep using it … that just makes a bit more sense.”
Patients with care plans or team care arrangements already in place will be able to continue to access services consistent with that plan or arrangement until July 2027.
