General Practice Aged Care Incentive (GPACI)
What is GPACI?
The GPACI is aimed at supporting older people living in residential aged care. It helps them receive quality primary care services from their regular provider and practice, by providing eligible providers, who are registered with My Medicare and can deliver on service requirements, with incentives to see patients in a residential aged care home. Eligible practices and providers will be able to register through the My Medicare program from 1 July 2024.
Incentive payments
Payments are made quarterly:
- $300 per patient, per year, paid to the responsible provider
- $130 per patient, per year, paid to the practice
The incentive payments will be quarterly, on top of existing Medicare Benefits Scheme (MBS) and Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) rebates for services delivered.
In any given assessment period (quarter), to be eligible to receive incentive payments, providers and practices must meet both eligibility and servicing requirements.
Eligibility criteria for practices
General practices must be an eligible practice and be registered in the:
- Organisation Register
- MyMedicare program (with banking details added)
- General Practice in Aged Care Incentive program
Eligibility criteria for providers
Providers must be:
- Declared as the responsible provider of eligible services to their eligible patient, including coordinating services provided by their care team
- An eligible provider
- Linked to their eligible practice
What you need to do
To register and access the incentive your practice must be eligible and registered for MyMedicare. Your patients that are aged care home residents will also need to be registered for MyMedicare with your practice.
General Practices, and ACCHs/ACCHOs and other eligible practices will be able to start registering in MyMedicare for the General Practice in Aged Care Incentive from 1 July 2024.
In preparation, make sure you:
1. Register your practice with MyMedicare
2. Register your aged care resident with MyMedicare
Residents can register online, or by filling in a form and submitting it to your practice. Use these resources to communicate with residents about MyMedicare.
Be sure to:
- Link your providers and your MyMedicare patients to your practice
- Select the General Practice in Aged Care Incentive indicator on your patients’ MyMedicare profiles
- Link patients to responsible providers in your practice
3. Prepare your practice and team to consider these questions:
- Which General Practitioners will be your Responsible Providers and have ongoing responsibility for visiting patients in Residential Aged Care Homes?
- Will any other members of your practice team also provide some of the visiting services to your Residential Aged Care home patients?
- How will visits be planned and coordinated with your practice team and the residential aged care home?
- Will you schedule regular recurring visits to aged care homes into the calendars of your practice team?
- How will you communicate with the residential aged care home to confirm appointments, or handle enquires from the home if care advice is required in between visits?
- Will your practice be accepting new patients from Residential Aged Care Homes?
- If so, consider contacting the aged care home to let them know and provide them with information they can share with patients about how to register with MyMedicare with your practice.If practices and residents are registered for the General Practice in Aged Care Incentive before 30 September 2024, eligible MBS and DVA items delivered during the full assessment quarter (July 2024 to September 2024) will be used to calculate entitlements for incentive payments.
