New Incentives To Provide Better Health Care To Indigenous Australians
A new incentive program to help provide better health care to Indigenous Australians was announced in Melbourne on 10 December.
View by date:
Previous MinistersPDF printable version of New Incentives To Provide Better Health Care To Indigenous Australians (PDF 23 KB)
10 December 2009
Minister for Indigenous Health, Rural and Regional Health and Regional Services Delivery, Warren Snowdon announced a new incentive program, to help provide better health care to Indigenous Australians, in Melbourne today.
Mr Snowdon said the first part of the Practice Incentives Program (PIP) Indigenous Health Incentive, costing $28 million over four years, will commence in May next year.
“It will target Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients aged 15 years and over with chronic disease. Chronic disease and associated risk factors, are responsible for about two-thirds of the life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.”
Chronic diseases include cancer, diabetes, renal and cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease.
The incentives will help support general practices and Indigenous health services to provide best practice management of chronic disease. It will target Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients aged 15 years and over with chronic disease.
The PIP Indigenous Health Incentive will include:
- a one-off payment of $1,000 to practices and Indigenous health services that agree to undertake certain activities to improve care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients
- an annual payment to practices and Indigenous health services of $250 for each eligible patient registered with the practice for chronic disease management
- an annual payment to practices and Indigenous health services of up to $250 for each eligible patient for whom a target level of care is provided by the practice.
Mr Snowdon said the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive is part of the Rudd Government’s $805 million contribution to COAG’s National Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap: Tackling Indigenous Chronic Disease.
The program is being administered by Medicare Australia on behalf of the Department of Health and Ageing.
To join this new incentive, practices must be participating in the PIP and meet specific
sign-on requirements. Information will be mailed to eligible practices in following weeks. Practices can also get further information by calling 1800 222 032.
The first payments through the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive will be made to eligible practices in May 2010.
A fact sheet on the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive is now available from the Medicare Australia website - http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/provider/incentives/pip/files/pip-indigenous-health-incentive-questions-answered.pdf
Media contact: Alice Plate 04000 45 999 or 02 62777 380
Help with accessing large documents
When accessing large documents (over 500 KB in size), it is recommended that the following procedure be used:
- Click the link with the RIGHT mouse button
- Choose "Save Target As.../Save Link As..." depending on your browser
- Select an appropriate folder on a local drive to place the downloaded file
Attempting to open large documents within the browser window (by left-clicking)
may inhibit your ability to continue browsing while the document is
opening and/or lead to system problems.
Help with accessing PDF documents
To view PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, you will need to have a PDF reader installed on your computer. A number of PDF readers are available through the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) Web Guide website.