Letters for Practice Incentives Program (PIP) and Workforce Incentive Program (WIP) - Practice Stream 012-22080436

Staff must use the endorsed Incentives standard letter templates in Operational Blueprint when sending written communication to customers. See Using Standard Letter Templates (SLTs) to create manual letters for more details.

Standard letter templates (SLT):

• are hard coded and enable quick access to approved letters
• are readily available on the intranet
• provide clarity, quality and consistency in correspondence

The wording in these letters must not be changed by Service Officers. Services Officers must not use their own versions of the Incentives letters.

All Incentive Programs letters are numbered. The letter number begins with Z followed by a 4-digit number. Letters are listed under the program type:

• Incentives Programs - letters used for PIP and WIP - Practice Stream
• Practice Incentives Program (PIP)
• Workforce Incentive Program (WIP) - Practice Stream
• Service Incentive Payment (SIP)

Operational Blueprint files for each individual work type state which letter staff should use.

The Resources page contains details for locating the template.

All Incentive Programs letters include a free text field. This option is used when there is no appropriate standard text option.

The free text field in Incentive Programs letters is password protected. The password is held by Program Management (Policy).

Requests for FTLs are forwarded to Policy for action. Policy will review the request and provide the FTL to the Service Officer.

The Process page has steps on requesting a FTL and information on saving Incentives letters.

Rejection letters must be attached to the associated PaNDA work item. The work item must be extracted from PaNDA for the rejection letter to be merged.

The combined document is uploaded to Associated Documents in PIP and WIP - Practice Online.

HPOS form upload allows the practice to upload the version of the form downloaded from the Services Australia website. These forms will have the agency password protection in place and cannot be modified or merged with other documents. Staff need to upload the form as a separate document.

See Associated documents and comments for PIP and WIP - Practice Stream for details on uploading to the practice profile.

Upload all letters to the practice profile.

Do not upload letters to PaNDA when a work item needs more details.

Only upload letters to PaNDA if:

• the practice does not provide their practice ID
• the practice ID is incorrect
• an application that cannot be registered in the system is rejected

See Table 2 in Associated documents and comments for PIP and WIP - Practice Stream to check which system to upload documents to. Relevant Operational Blueprint files will advise where the form should be saved once the letter is sent.

WIP Practice Stream approval letters are system-generated overnight after a practice is approved in the program. There is a known system issue where a 'phantom' practice ID generates as part of the application. When this happens, the practice approval letter shows the incorrect practice ID.

Service Officers can create a new approval letter with the correct practice ID if requested by the practice. For more details, see Table 4.

Incentives Programs follow Health Service Delivery Division letter quality checking processes.

Peer-to-peer letting checking is only used while determining proficiency for staff new to the process.

Once staff are deemed proficient, letters are checked as part of the normal quality checking process.

Free text letters for Incentive Programs do not need to be quality checked as they are completed by the Program Management Policy team.

See Preparing, quality and peer to peer checking of Medicare external mail for requirements on preparing outgoing correspondence and checking processes.