April 2015

Your RACGP is committed to ensuring general practice remains at the forefront of delivering quality primary healthcare to individuals and families in our communities.  By providing excellence in the development of education, training, quality guidelines and tools the RACGP and its members continue to set the professional standards for general practice in Australia.  With a strong collegiate network of more than 29,000 members in all regions of Australia the RACGP is your professional home. By participating through faculty events around the coun...

The RACGP has developed  A guide for hardware and software requirements in general practice  to assist general practices determine what IT requirements they may need for their business. The guide encompasses recommendations from existing RACGP eHealth resources and relevant government websites. It contains links and explanatory notes on each topic, including a checklist that can be used to form part of practice policies. This guide is a useful resource when opening a new practice and for periodic reviews.

Medicines Australia Code of Conduct is the voluntary industry code of conduct for the prescription medicines industry in Australia.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (the ACCC) has  issued a final determination  granting conditional authorisation to Medicines Australia’s Code of Conduct for a period of five years.  Because of the potential influence 'transfers of value', such as educational trips and speakers fees, can have on prescribing behaviour, the RACGP has been advocating for greater transparency in the way transfers of value ...

Any amount of physical activity is better than none. This simple message can be effective for your patients who are not already engaging in regular physical activity. Sedentary patients should be encouraged to start by doing some light physical activity before gradually building up to the recommended amount. The latest RACGP  Smoking, nutrition, alcohol, physical activity (SNAP): A population health guide to behavioural risk factors in general practice  supports this notion and other recommendations from Australia’s physical activity and sedentary...

Health Minister Sussan Ley  announced significant reviews of the healthcare system  at a health policy event on Wednesday, where I was delighted to be representing the RACGP to provide a GP’s perspective. Minister Ley told the George Institute for Global Health event that the Federal Government would initiate a review of the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), establish a Primary Healthcare Advisory Group and develop clearer Medicare compliance rules and benchmarks. The RACGP is keen to ensure the views of GPs are strongly represented across all of t...

Following robust discussion at the Governance Review member consultation workshops, the RACGP has commenced evaluating the themes, ideas, issues and suggestions that emerged. The consultation process engaged many members through face-to-face workshops and webinars. Thank you to all the members who participated and who continue to submit ideas. Many concepts and ideas emerged during this process, and more will be drawn from further examination of the consultations. Key themes raised by members included support for: Council moving towards a small...

The RACGP is pleased to announce the results of the 2015.1 Key Feature Problem (KFP) are  now available online . Candidates can access their results by logging onto the RACGP website with their username and password. Please call 1800 626 901 or email  racgpeducation@racgp.org.au  for any enquiries.

The RACGP has conducted an  In Practice  survey over the past three weeks, seeking members’ views on how the indexation freeze on Medicare rebates will affect patient services in general practices. The results found GPs will tackle the indexation freeze in a range of ways. The majority of respondents (57%), said they would be forced to pass increased out-of-pocket expenses onto patients, either because their practice will be forced to stop bulk billing (30%) or will charge higher out-of-pocket costs to non-concessional card holders (27%). Another 3...