Teaching Payment Claims for Practice Incentives Program (PIP) 012-10110000

Teaching Payment is a payment to encourage general practices to provide teaching sessions to undergraduate and graduate medical students preparing to enter the Australian medical profession.

Quality teaching makes sure practitioners have the appropriate training and experience to work in a general practice.

General Practitioners should do normal consultations when a student is present.

A practice does not need to apply to participate in this incentive but must be approved for the Practice Incentives Program.

A practice can claim a Teaching Payment by:

• Health Professional Online Services (HPOS) up to and on the relevant point-in-time date
• the Practice Incentives Program Teaching Payment claim (IP006) form. This must be submitted at least 7 days before the relevant point-in-time date

A teaching session must be a minimum of 3 hours long. A practice can claim a maximum of 2 teaching sessions per GP daily. GPs supervising multiple students in a single session can only claim for one session/student.

The number of teaching sessions claimed per student is not limited provided no more than 2 were supervised by the same GP.

Do not process incorrect or incomplete claim forms.

Do not complete missing details on behalf of the practice.

Claims prior to 1 January 2015 are not eligible for payment.

Previous versions of the IP006 form are acceptable if the version was acceptable at the date the university certified this form. See Forms for Practice Incentives Program (PIP) and Workforce Incentive Program (WIP) - Practice Stream for more information.

Students must be enrolled in an eligible course at an Australian university and the sessions must be part of the core curriculum for the course. If the sessions are for an elective or non-core curriculum course, escalate to Program Management via LPS. Eligibility for these sessions will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Practices can only claim the Teaching Payment for undergraduate and graduate students. Sessions provided to students undertaking a PhD or other course are not eligible for payment.

The Teaching Payment guidelines for more details about student eligibility.

Practices must submit all pages of the current version of the form. Practices must not submit claim forms with pages from different versions.

The exception is where the session details page is from an earlier form version. These claim forms can be accepted if the:

• practice details, university certification and student and practice declaration are from the current version and are completed correctly
• session details page contains the same information as the current form version

A comment must be added to the practice profile when a claim is accepted with the session details page from a previous form version.

Escalate to Local Peer Support (LPS) if unsure the claim can be accepted.

Practices and universities must use the current version of the Practice Incentives Program Teaching Payment claim (IP006) form. Previous versions can be accepted if the version was acceptable at the date of university certification. See Table 1 on the Resources page in Forms for PIP and WIP - Practice Stream.

If a claim rejected as ‘old form’ is resubmitted with a university certification date after the first teaching session, escalate these claims to Local Peer Support (LPS) for Program Management (Policy) review. The Policy team will determine if the resubmitted claim can be processed or if more information is needed.

A practice can only claim teaching sessions dated from their date of approval in the PIP. Sessions dated before the approval date are not eligible.

Teaching sessions must be supervised by a general practitioner current on the practice profile at the date of the session. Sessions supervised by other health professionals in the practice are not eligible under the PIP Teaching Payment.

Teaching sessions are not payable when provided to:

• registrars
• junior doctors
• nursing, allied health, or pharmacy students, and
• overseas medical students

Claim forms submitted with a mix of eligible and ineligible sessions must be rejected in full. Do not part process the claim and do not address the ineligible sessions in the rejection letter.

The exception to part-processing is where the form includes sessions that do not meet the eligibility guidelines. For these claims, the eligible sessions are processed, and the ineligible sessions rejected.

The Resources page has information about Teaching Payment Guidelines.

The date of approval for the PIP may impact payment of teaching sessions claimed in the quarter in which the practice was approved.

To receive a payment in the quarter in which the practice was approved for the PIP, the practice must be approved by the 18th day of the first month of the quarter. If the practice approval date is after the 18th day of the first month of the quarter, the claim will be paid in the following quarterly payment.

For example:

Practice A is approved for the PIP on 17 May. On 15 July, a teaching payment claim is submitted for sessions provided in June. The practice approval date is before the 18th of May (first month on the quarter). Payment for these sessions will be included in the August quarterly payment for the practice.

Practice B is approved for the PIP on 1 June. On 15 July, a teaching payment claim is submitted for sessions provided in June. As the practice approval date for the PIP is after 18 May, the teaching payment will not be included in the August quarterly payment, The sessions will be paid in the November quarter.

The Resources page has more information.

A practice is eligible to claim teaching sessions if the practice was open and participating in PIP at the date the session was provided.

If a practice closes or is withdrawn, the practice may be eligible for any unpaid teaching sessions if the:

• practice closed before, the point in time date for the next quarterly payment, and
• sessions were provided before the date of closure/withdrawal

If a practice notifies a closure and has claims waiting for payment, escalate to Payments team before closing the practice. See Practice closure or withdrawal in PIP and WIP - Practice Stream for more information. Eligible sessions will be paid as a manual payment via the R1P system.

Teaching payment claim forms submitted after a practice has closed must be escalated to Program Management (Payments) for assessment and payment. Tell practices enquiring about payment of unsubmitted claims that they must complete a Review of decision form (IP027).

A university representative must sign and date the university certification section before the first teaching session. If the certification date is the same date as the first teaching session, this is acceptable.

The university certification is to confirm the:

• student is enrolled in an eligible medical course at an eligible university or university campus
• university has arranged the sessions with the practice

The university is not confirming the practice provided the claimed sessions.

A practice can provide correspondence with the university arranging the sessions if the university did not complete the certification before the first teaching session.

The correspondence must be dated before the first teaching session, be addressed to the practice, and include the:

• name of the university
• full name of a university representative
• student’s full name
• student’s identification number. The student ID number is not mandatory as it is not always included in the correspondence

Claims rejected due to the university certification date cannot be accepted with an amended certification date. The practice must resubmit the claim with university correspondence confirming the hosting arrangements.

Note: the above information does not need to be in the body of the correspondence. It may be included in the subject line, address information and/or the senders signature block.

Universities must be registered as an eligible university with the PIP before Teaching Payment claims can be processed.

If a claim is received from an unregistered university, escalate to Program Management (Policy team). Policy team will review the university eligibility and refer the request to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.

Claims for students at unregistered universities must be pended in PaNDA until confirmation of university eligibility has been received. Policy team will advise when the pended claims can be processed.

In January 2025, the University of Melbourne created their own version of the Practice Incentives Program Teaching Payment claim form (IP006). Approximately 440 of these claim forms were distributed to an unknown number of PIP practices to facilitate claiming teaching sessions for students on placement.

These forms:

• are in Rich Text Format (RTF) - a Word document
• have version IP006.2412 in the bottom left of each page

Services Australia agreed to accept these claim forms under the following specific circumstances:

• it is in RTF (Word) format
• states it is version IP006.2412
• was certified by the university on or before 28 March 2025
• has a copy of the PIP Policy team email sent to the university representative dated 2 April 2025 attached
• is completed, signed and dated correctly

This exception does not apply to any other universities.

Flinders University were unaware a new version of the Practice Incentives Program Teaching Payment claim (IP006) form had been published in 2024. The university continued to use version IP006.2305 until mid-June 2025.

An unknown number of practices were impacted by the university using the old form version. To minimise the impact on affected practices, Services Australia agreed to accept these claims if the following requirements are met:

• The student is from Flinders University
• It is form version IP006.2305
• The university certification date is on, or before, 30 June 2025
• The claim form must be completed according to the Teaching Payment guidelines

Claim forms that cannot be processed should be rejected as normal without addressing the form version in the rejection letter