Quality and safety
Primary Health Tasmania supports safety and quality in general practice in areas such as:
- infection control
- cold chain management
- practice accreditation
- Practice Incentive Program
- using data for quality improvement
Primary Health Tasmania supports safety and quality in general practice in areas such as:
The prevention and control of infection in general practice is an integral part of quality and safety improvement and clinical risk management.
Cold chain is the system of transporting or storing vaccines within the safe temperature range of 2°C to 8°C. A cold chain breach is exposure of vaccines to temperature outside this range, excluding fluctuations up to 12°C for less than 15 minutes when restocking, cleaning the fridge or stock taking.
Worried you’ve had a breach? Contact the Tasmanian Department of Health’s Communicable Diseases Prevention Unit (CDPU) on 1800 671 738.
Accreditation for general practice is based on the RACGP Standards for General Practice. There are four approved accrediting agencies – the AGPAL Group of Companies, the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards, Global Mark, and the Quality Practice Accreditation.
The Practice Incentives Program (PIP) supports general practice activities that encourage continuing improvements, quality care, enhancing capacity and improving access and health outcomes for patients.
The number and type of incentives available within PIP will change from 1 August 2019 when four of the existing incentives will cease and a new incentive, the PIP Quality Improvement (QI) Incentive will commence.
The QI Incentive aims to recognise and support those practices that commit to improving the care they provide to their patients. Participating practices will be supported to utilise the information they have about their own communities and their knowledge of the particular needs of their own patients to develop innovative strategies to drive improvement.
As well as demonstrating a commitment to quality improvement, practices will share a minimum set of aggregated data with their local Primary Health Network (PHN), such as the number of patients who are diabetic, the percent who smoke, the cardiovascular risk and weight profile.
This information will be collated at the local level by the PHNs to assist in supporting improvement and understanding health needs. There is no requirement for individual patient data, and any measures from an individual practice will not be available to the Department of Health.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), the Australian Medical Association (AMA), the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM), the Rural Doctors Association of Australia (RDAA), the Australian Association of Practice Managers (AAPM) and the National Aboriginal and Community Controlled Health Organisations (NACCHO) are all working together as members of the Practice Incentives Program Advisory Group (PIPAG), along with the Department of Health to ensure that this initiative is focused on quality improvement and does not follow other countries in introducing a ‘pay for performance’ program with perverse incentives.
The Colleges, AMA, RDAA, AAPM and NACCHO are also working closely with the PHNs to ensure the program has strong governance of general practice data.
With an implementation date of 1 August 2019, the following four Incentives will continue through to 31 July 2019 and then cease:
• Asthma Incentive
• Quality Prescribing Incentive
• Cervical Screening Incentive
• Diabetes Incentive.
The seven PIP Incentives that will remain unchanged are:
• eHealth Incentive
• After Hours Incentive
• General Practitioner Aged Care Access Incentive
• Rural Loading Incentive
• Teaching Payment
• Indigenous Health Incentive, and
• Procedural General Practitioner Payment.
We have prepared this easy-to-follow fact sheet to explain how PIP QI fits into our Primary Health Information Network, which you can find out more about here.
To contact our provider support team, send us an email or call us on 1300 653 169.