Indigenous Health Incentive (IHI) patient registration and withdrawal for Practice Incentives Program (PIP) 012-10070040

The PIP IHI supports general practices and Indigenous health services (practices) to provide better health care for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australian patients. This includes best practice management of chronic disease and mental disorders.

To participate in the IHI, practices must be approved for the PIP and meet the eligibility requirements set out in the PIP and IHI guidelines. They can apply for the IHI:

• with their PIP application using the Practice Incentives application form (IP001)
• after they are approved for the PIP, using the Practice Incentives Program Indigenous Health Incentive practice application form (IP026)
• online through HPOS as part of an initial application or after the practice has been approved in the PIP

The Resources page contains more details.

The patient, parent or guardian must provide consent for the patient to be registered for the IHI. If the patient is under 15 years, a parent or guardian must provide consent. A guardian can provide consent where a patient of any age is not able to provide their own consent. The patient registration must identify who has provided consent.

Practices can register their eligible patients by:

• HPOS, or
• submitting a completed PIP IHI patient registration, and
• consent form (IP017)

When a practice uses HPOS to register patients, they do not need to submit a copy of the form. The patient must sign the consent section of the current form version. The practice must keep the form for 6 years for compliance and audit purposes.

Note: the IHI system allows for patients to be registered at multiple practices.

On 1 January 2025, patient registration changed from annual registration to lifetime registration. Under lifetime registration, eligibility for the IHI starts from the date of patient consent on the PIP IHI patient registration and consent form (IP017).

Patients under 15 years

Patients under 15 years are registered under the lifetime registration, however once the patient turns 15 years and consent was provided by a parent, they will need to provide their own consent. A guardian can give consent where the patient is not capable of providing their own consent.

If the consent is not updated before the patient turns 16 years, their registration will be automatically withdrawn.

Each month, letters are sent to practices listing all patients who have turned 15 years in the last month. The letter advises that patients must reconsent under their own or a guardian’s consent before turning 16 years to remain registered for the IHI.

Practices will only receive the letters if they are registered for HPOS communication, and their primary contact has their RA number linked to the practice profile.

Notification to withdraw

The notification to withdraw process supports practices keeping their young patients registered.

Every month, an automated process will run to:

• identify patients that turned 15 years of age in the previous month, and
• who have parent as their registration consent type

A notification letter is sent to practices that are registered for HPOS notifications.

The notification letter tells the practice:

• why Services Australia is contacting them
• the impacted patients
• how to use the Update Patient Consent process

The Resources page contains an example of the letter.

Automated Patient Withdrawal

This process supports the agency in complying with the legal requirement for 15 year old patients to be registered under the appropriate consent.

When a patient turns 16 years and is still under a parent’s consent, their registration under the IHI is automatically withdrawn.

If a patient is registered at 2 or more practices and their registration has been updated at one practice, their registration will continue under that practice. If their consent has not been updated at other practices, then those registration records will be withdrawn.

Withdrawals actioned by the automated process appear on the Patient Registration screen as ‘Withdrawn by code P99999. Withdrawal reason is aged-based withdrawal’.

This process runs in the background daily.

If the patient is withdrawn from the IHI, they can re-register at any time if they still meet the eligibility requirements. For these patients, eligibility starts from the new date of consent.

One-off sign-on payment

Practices can get a one-off sign-on payment of $1,000 if they register for the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive. The sign-on payment is paid to practices in the next quarterly payment after they are approved.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 outcome payments are based on:

• Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) services provided by a practitioner registered to the PIP practice, to a registered IHI patient within a 12-month assessment period
• 15 months of a patient's MBS service history leading up to the calculation quarter

To be assessed for eligibility to the PIP IHI outcome payments, the practice:

• must be registered as an approved PIP practice and approved for PIP IHI at the point-in-time date
• patients must be registered under IHI, with at least one PIP practice at the point-in-time date

Patients do not need to be IHI registered at the practice for the practice to receive an outcome payment for providing eligible services. Any PIP IHI practice providing a target level of tier 1 and tier 2 services to the patient will be eligible for the outcome payments.

While outcome payments use the date of service to determine eligibility, the PIP payment system can only identify eligible items once Medicare processes them. The PIP payment system will re-assess eligibility each quarter using items Medicare has processed up to the quarterly point-in-time date.

Changes to the MBS Mental Health Treatment Plan Review items came into effect on 1 November 2025. From this date, mental health treatment plan reviews are managed under the standard GP consultation item numbers. These changes may impact practice eligibility for Tier 1 Outcome Payments for some patients.

Changes to the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive Tier 1 outcome payments were driven by changes to:

• MBS Chronic Disease Management items from 1 July 2025, and
• the MBS Mental Health Treatment Plan Review items from 1 November 2025

Services Australia administers payments in accordance with the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive Guidelines set by Government.

The IHI Guidelines for PIP has a detailed list of the eligible item numbers which will generate a Tier 1 Outcome payment for a patient.

Patients can withdraw from the PIP IHI at any time. To withdraw, they must complete the PIP Indigenous Health Incentive patient withdrawal of consent (IP029) form.

When a patient withdraws from IHI, they will be withdrawn from all practices they have registered with. This is even if the patient is registered with multiple practices and wants to withdraw from one or some, but not all. They need to be withdrawn from all the practices and register again with the practices they want.

Note: patients who want to register multiple practices as their usual practice should complete the PIP IHI patient registration and consent form (IP017) with each practice.

The IHI patient registration screen includes a Delete Patient option. Deleting the patient removes all evidence of the patient registration from the practice profile. This function should only be used where a patient has been incorrectly registered for the incentive.

The Delete Patient option may need to be used when:

• a practice has registered an ineligible patient
• a service officer registers an ineligible patient

There is no form for deleting patients. For practice notification, the request must include the:

• practice name
• practice ID
• reason for deletion
• name and signature of an authorised contact person

Submission of the completed IP017 with the above information and the reason for deletions is acceptable.

See the Process page for steps on deleting a patient.

There are 2 options to search for IHI patient registrations.

Option 1 - searching from the practice profile:

• lists all registrations for the patient at that practice
• is available for both internal and external users

Option 2 - IHI Patient Search tab:

• searches IHI patient registrations across all PIP practices
• lists current and past registrations at all practices
• is for internal users only

Both options use the following search criteria:

• Search criteria 1 - uses the patient’s Medicare card number and individual reference number (IRN)
• Search criteria 2 - uses the patient’s details. Criteria 2 allows for searches where all the patient’s details may not be known

Individual PIP practices can only view the registration records for patients registered at the practice.

The Process page contains more details.

Searches can be performed with minimal information including wildcard searches (*). A maximum of 50 records has been applied to ‘open’ searches. This limit applies to internal and external users. A full list of all patients registered at a practice is not available if the number is more than 50.

The Patient Assessment Details screen provides information about Tier 1 and Tier 2 outcome payments for individual patients including:

• if an outcome payment was made for each tier
• a breakdown of the MBS items processed under each tier for the relevant assessment period

Patients can be registered at multiple practices. The Tier 1 and Tier 2 outcome payments are paid to all approved practices that provide eligible MBS items as outlined in the guidelines. The Tier 2 outcome payment is paid to all practices providing the minimum number of MBS items to a registered patient.

Practices need to register IHI patients under their practice if they want to see their registration details including:

• if they have received an outcome payment for a patient, or
• how close they are in meeting the eligibility criteria

For more details about:

• the Patient Assessment Details screen, see the Review patient assessment details and outcome payment table on the Process page
• the Tier 1 item numbers and outcome payment, see the IHI guidelines on the Resources page