Letters for Practice Incentives Program (PIP) and Workforce Incentive Program (WIP) - Practice Stream 012-22080436
This document outlines how to prepare and send letters to practices.
Standard Letter Templates
Staff must use the endorsed Incentives standard letter templates in Operational Blueprint when sending written communication to customers. See Using Standard Letter Templates (SLT) for more details.
Standard Letter Templates (SLTs):
- are hard coded and enable quick access to approved letters
- are readily available on the Intranet
- provide clarity, quality and consistency in our 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)
The individual work type Operational Blueprint pages state which letter should be used.
The Resources page contains details for locating the template.
Free text letters
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 Free Text Letters (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.
Merging Letters with PaNDA Work Item
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.
See Associated documents and comments for PIP and WIP - Practice Stream for details on uploading to the practice profile.
Uploading Letters
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 IP011 form is rejected or
- an application that cannot 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 will advise where the form should be saved to once the letter is sent.
Quality checking of letters
Incentives Programs follow HSDD letter quality checking processes.
Peer-to-peer letting checking is only used while determining proficiency for staff new to the process.
Once staff have been deemed proficient, letters will be 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.
The Resources page contains:
- important points about creating new mail in HPOS
- details on locating standard letter templates
- practice incentives letter list
- link to letters
- tables about determining the postal address and addressee
- details about how to find a sent HPOS mail message, and
- contact details
Related links
Preparing, quality and peer to peer checking of Medicare external mail
Using Standard Letter Templates (SLT)