2018 Newsletters

The Federal Government released its 2018–19 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) on 17 December. The MYEFO provides an update on the economic and fiscal outlook from the previous Federal Budget. The RACGP has reviewed the expense measures included in the 2018–19 MYEFO and has  developed an overview  of the new initiatives and changes to existing programs. The announcements for health expenditure in the 2018–19 MYEFO include a $512 million ‘strengthening primary care’ package, which includes $318 million specifically directed towards general ...

The MBS Review Taskforce has released its  Report from the General Practice and Primary Care Clinical Committee  (the Report) for consultation. The Report has 18 recommendations, including: a move to a patient-centred primary care model supporting GP stewardship a new general practice patient enrolment fee support for flexible access, including non-face-to-face access changes to chronic disease management items a change to Level B item descriptors to set a minimum six-minute consultation length the introduction of an Medicare Benefits Sch...

Health service providers have consistently featured in official reports as significant sources of data breach notifications, since the introduction of the Notifiable Data Breach (NDB) scheme in February 2018.  A new RACGP resource,  Notifiable Data Breach scheme fact sheet , is now available on the RACGP website. The fact sheet supports general practices to appropriately assess and identify notifiable data breaches and understand the mandatory reporting requirements under the NDB scheme. Additional  privacy  and  information security  resources f...

The RACGP’s national office, as well as all state and territory faculties, will be closed for the Christmas and New Year period from close of business Friday 21 December, and will re-open on Monday 7 January 2019. We wish all of our members, colleagues, patients and their families a safe and happy festive period. The RACGP  member portal  and online services such as  shareGP ,  recruitGP  and  gp learning  will still be available at this time. 

The RACGP polled members on what they thought were essential infrastructure requirements to support and maintain high quality patient care in residential aged care facilities (RACFs). The top three responses identified by members were: Access to current patient health records (44%) Access to a consulting room (22%) Access to current patient medication charts (22%) Thank you to all respondents for taking time to provide feedback, which will help to inform future work surrounding quality and safety for GPs working in RACFs.

The Department of Health (DoH) advises that cases of infectious syphilis continue to be diagnosed in outbreak regions in northern and central Australia, particularly in males and females aged 15–29 years. The rapid and widespread nature of the outbreak, and high mobility of the at-risk population, may result in spread to new non-outbreak areas. GPs are encouraged to: test all young people annually for sexually transmissible infections (STIs) test all young people with another STI (chlamydia, gonorrhoea, trichomoniasis, mycoplasma genitalium) ...

RACGP members are advised of changes to Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) treatment benefits.  Federal Treasurer the Hon Josh Frydenberg and Minister for Veterans’ Affairs the Hon Darren Chester have announced the provision of a Gold Card for Australian civilian surgical and medical teams that provided medical aid, training and treatment to local Vietnamese people during the Vietnam War.  From 1 July 2020, all doctors and nurses who meet the criteria will be eligible for the DVA Gold Card.  The DVA Gold Card will provide access to medical trea...

The DoH will be writing to general practices that received the eHealth Practice Incentive Program (ePIP) payments for the November 2017 to January 2018 quarter but did not meet their minimum shared health summary upload targets for this quarter. It is expected that practices will begin receiving these letters in early December 2018. Practices that engage with compliance activities can request an exemption on the basis of compelling circumstances, including ongoing technical difficulties beyond their control. Affected practices will be asked to rev...