Eligibility for the Commonwealth Qualified Privilege Scheme

Quality assurance activities must involve Australian Government funding to be eligible for a declaration under this scheme. Find out more about eligible activities and the organisations that are eligible to apply.

Eligible quality assurance activities

To be eligible for a declaration under the Commonwealth Qualified Privilege Scheme, a quality assurance activity must include one of the following:

  • assessing or evaluating the quality of health services
  • studying the conditions or circumstances that may affect the quality of health services
  • making recommendations to improve or maintain the quality of health services based on that assessment, evaluation or study
  • monitoring the implementation of one of those recommendations.

The health services must involve one of the following areas of Australian Government funding:

  • Medicare benefits
  • public hospital services
  • health program grants
  • prescribing of pharmaceutical products under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Location and nature of the activity

All states and territories except the Northern Territory have similar qualified privilege legislation.

The Commonwealth scheme is for quality assurance activities that take place in more than one state or territory.

If the activity will only take place in one state or territory, the activity must either:

  • not be subject to the relevant state or territory legislation – and you have received advice from the state or territory government of this
  • involve a methodology that is new in Australia
  • be a pilot study to investigate whether a methodology can be used in Australia
  • address a topic that has not previously been addressed in Australia
  • have the potential to affect the quality of health care on a national scale
  • be a pilot study to investigate whether the activity may affect the quality of health care on a national scale
  • be of national importance.

If your activity does not meet the above criteria, contact the relevant state or territory health department to see if it falls under their qualified privilege scheme.

Eligible organisations

We accept applications from organisations who are authorised to carry out eligible activities. They include:

  • healthcare service providers
  • educational and research bodies
  • medical colleges
  • health professional associations
  • government bodies.

For more detail, see Part VC of the Health Insurance Act 1973.

Examples

Examples of eligible activities include academic studies of incidents, performance evaluations and some registries.

Examples of recently declared activities include:

Contact

If you’re not sure about your eligibility, contact us to discuss before you apply.

Commonwealth Qualified Privilege Scheme contact

Contact us to find out more about the Commonwealth Qualified Privilege Scheme.
Date last updated:

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