Practice Incentives Program eHealth Incentive (ePIP)

Accurate data records and clinical coding play a pivotal role in not only ensuring the highest standards of patient care but also in achieving compliance with the Practice Incentive Program eHealth Incentive (ePIP).

Achieving ePIP compliance

The Practice Incentives Program eHealth Incentive (ePIP) is a government initiative aimed at improving the quality of general practice. It offers incentives to GPs to encourage best practices and enhance patient care.

To qualify for ePIP incentives, practices must meet five specific eligibility requirements:

Requirement 1 – integrating healthcare identifiers into electronic practice records

The practice must:

• Apply to Services Australia to obtain a Healthcare Provider Identifier–Organisation (HPI–O) for the practice, and store the HPI–O in a compliant clinical software system.
• Ensure that each general practitioner within the practice has their Healthcare Provider Identifier–Individual (HPI–I) stored in a compliant clinical software system.
• Use a compliant clinical software system to access, retrieve and store verified Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) for presenting patients.

Requirement 2 – secure messaging capability

The practice must have a standards-compliant secure messaging capability to electronically transmit and receive clinical messages to and from other healthcare providers, use it where feasible, and have a written policy to encourage its use in place.

Requirement 3 – data records and clinical coding

Practices must ensure that where clinically relevant, they are working towards recording the majority of diagnoses for active patients electronically, using a medical vocabulary that can be mapped against a nationally recognised disease classification or terminology system. Practices must provide a written policy to this effect to all GPs within the practice.

Requirement 4 – electronic transfer of prescriptions

The practice must ensure that the majority of their prescriptions are sent electronically to a Prescription Exchange Service (PES).

We usually recommend the largest vendor, which is eRX.

Requirement 5 – My Health Record system

The practice must:

• Use compliant software for accessing the My Health Record system, and for creating and posting shared health summaries and event summaries.
• Apply to participate in the My Health Record system upon obtaining a HPI–O.
• Upload a shared health summary for a minimum of 0.5% of the practice’s standardised whole patient equivalent (SWPE) count of patients per PIP payment quarter.

Further information on ePIP can be found via the Australian Digital Health Agency

eHealth Practice Incentives Program (ePIP) on HealthPathways Melbourne

Find out more