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, including 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 via HPOS as part of an initial application or after the practice has been approved in the PIP

See the Resources page for 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, consent must be provided by a parent or guardian. A guardian can provide consent where a patient of any age is not able to provide their own consent.

Patients are registered from 1 January of the calendar year in which they give consent until 31 December of that year, up to 31 December 2024. Patients registered for the first time between 1 November 2023 and 31 December 2023 will be registered for the 2023 and 2024 calendar years.

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.

From 1 January 2025, patient registration will change from annual registration to lifetime registration. Under lifetime registration, eligibility for the IHI will start from the date of patient consent on the PIP IHI patient registration and consent form (IP017).

All patients registered or re-registered for the IHI between 1 November 2023 and 31 December 2024 will be registered for 2024. They are registered under the lifetime registration from 1 January 2025. This includes patients that are under the age of 15.

Patients under 15 years

Are registered under the lifetime registration, however when a patient turns 15 and consent was provided by a parent, they will need to provide their own consent. Consent can be given by a guardian where the patient is not capable of providing their own consent.

If the consent is not updated before the patient turns 16, their registration will be automatically withdrawn.

Practices that are registered for HPOS notification will receive one with all patients that have turned 15, that need to be reconsented to remain registered for IHI.

Notification to withdraw

The notification to withdraw process is to support practices to keep 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 are contacting them
• the impacted patients
• how to update the patients consent using the Update Patient Consent process

See the Resources page for an example of the letter.

Automated Patient Withdrawal

This process is 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 of age 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 will run in the background daily.

If the patient is withdrawn from the IHI they can also re-register at any time if they still meet the eligibility requirements.

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 will be paid to practices in the next quarterly payment after they are approved.

Patient registration payments (for patients that consented before 1 November 2024)

Practices that meet the eligibility criteria can get one registration payment per patient per calendar year, for patients over 15. This is for patients that consented before 1 November 2024. Registration payments are not paid for patients under 15.

Annual patient registration payments are ending when lifetime registration start.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 outcome payments

Tier 1 and Tier 2 outcome payments:

• are based on MBS services provided to registered patients within a 12-month assessment period
• can be paid to practices if they achieve the required number of processed MBS services for the patient in the 12-month assessment period

The practice will be eligible for a Tier 1 and Tier 2 if they meet the eligibility for the payments, even if a patient:

• has not registered for IHI with a practice, and
• is registered for IHI

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.

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 details. Criteria 2 allows for searches where all the patient details may not be known

See the Search and update a patient registration using the IHI patient search tab table on the Process page for 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 outcome payment will be paid to practices that bill the relevant MBS items as outlined in the guidelines.

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