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:
- a vascular audit by the Australian and New Zealand Society for Vascular Surgery
- a clinician-led review of perinatal and maternal deaths by an NT Department of Health committee
- intensive care registries by the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society.
Contact
If you’re not sure about your eligibility, contact us to discuss before you apply.
