Planning with your practice team
This activity aims to raise awareness among your practice team of MyMedicare, Chronic Conditions Management changes, and support your team to explore their roles in both MyMedicare and Chronic Conditions Management.
By exploring and defining these roles, your practice team can work collaboratively to prepare for change and develop processes, systems and skills needed to succeed.
This process will help ease your team through change and provide a shared document that can help your team to identify and discuss anything that isn’t quite working as planned, explore changes and update the document to keep everyone on the same page. This approach will allow your team to adapt and improve and empower each team member in their own role.
Activity outcomes
- Your practice team has a better understanding of MyMedicare (Voluntary Patient Registration)
- Your practice team has a better understanding of the proposed Chronic Conditions Management changes
- Your practice team roles in MyMedicare and Chronic Conditions Management are well defined, and each team member has a clear role and responsibilities
Activity Ideas
Step 1: Engage your practice team to inform them about MyMedicare and the changes to Chronic conditions management:
- Team meeting or quick lunch catch up to communicate the changes
- Post an update in the practice staff room
- Send an email to the practice team with the critical information
Step 2: Explore the benefits of MyMedicare with your practice team
- Talking points for your practice for MyMedicare are included below for you to adapt and share. If you plan to discuss these in an open forum with your team, you may want to share these in advance, and pose some general questions such as:
– What could be some of the benefits of increasing MyMedicare participation for our practice?
– What does/could MyMedicare mean for our practice and patients?
– How does a stronger relationship with patients fit with our practice business plan and strategy? - The MyMedicare GP Toolkit provides a good summary of the current benefits of MyMedicare for General Practices. The toolkit also includes a range of helpful resources your practice can use to communicate with patients.
Step 3: Explore Chronic Conditions Management Changes with your practice team
- A summary of CCM changes is included below for you to adapt and share. You may want to have a team discussion and pose some open questions such as:
– How are these changes similar or different to current CDM care?
– Are our practice nurses or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners confident in care planning or is there more training or development we wish to plan for?
– What is our ratio of care plans to care plan reviews at the moment? What changes would we need to make to conduct more regular reviews?
– More considerations for planning are included in CCM Activity 1 - More information is available at these links:
– Chronic Conditions Management (CCM) MBS item changes
– MBS Review Taskforce.
Step 4: Engage with your practice team to explore and document team roles and responsibilities related to MyMedicare and Chronic Conditions Management. Resources proposing some team roles ideas and a blank template are linked here to help you get started.
- Explore roles and responsibilities with the practice team in a meeting or quick lunchtime discussions
- Document agreed roles and responsibilities and communicate this with your team
- Discuss and document how each team member will incorporate their responsibilities into their workday and work week
- Schedule a time to review your documented roles and responsibilities
- Check in with your practice team 4 weeks after publishing these for a quick reflection and to maintain momentum as people adapt to their new responsibilities
- Review team roles and responsibilities at 3 months and make any changes or improvements based on lessons learned
MyMedicare Talking Points for General Practices
- MyMedicare formalises the relationship between patients, their general practice, general practitioner and primary care teams, strengthening continuity of care and supporting a shift towards more integrated, person-centred models of care.
- MyMedicare benefits and impacts will change and are likely to expand over time.
- Right now, MyMedicare provides an opportunity for your practice to establish more formal and enduring relationships with patients, where you both formally agree to work together on their health journey.
- Getting involved in MyMedicare early will help reduce the effort of changes later in time, and may lead to some interesting conversations about what practices expect of you, and what you expect of them!
- Starting discussions about MyMedicare now can help your practice to consider how you might want to shape your strategy, business and care offerings with MyMedicare as an essential piece of the puzzle.
- Supporting implementation of MyMedicare may require your practice to:
– Engage specifically with priority populations (for example, patients with a chronic disease, or those living in a nursing home).
– Consider making changes to your models of care, business and administrative processes (for example, you may wish to introduce MyMedicare Registration information into your patient consent and registration process).
– Make changes to your practice team roles or provide an opportunity for learning, development and training for your primary care workforce and practice teams for example:
a) You may decide to enhance the role Nurses and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners have in care planning,
b) Your reception team may need to understand MyMedicare to explain it to patients, and help them register online, or complete MyMedicare registration forms in PRODA
– Introduce changes to how you use practice software systems and digital systems (for example, regularly checking PRODA and updating information in your practice software for registered MyMedicare patients)
– Communicate clearly about MyMedicare with your patients and their families (you may want to include
Summary of Chronic Conditions Management Changes
Subject to the passing of legislation, MyMedicare is an important element of planned changes to existing Chronic Disease Management in 2025. ‘Chronic Conditions Management (CCM) MBS item changes recommended by the MBS Review Taskforce are ‘the first major change to chronic disease management in 20 years, and are scheduled to come into effect 1 July 2025’.
Previously, changes to Chronic Conditions Management were due to occur 1 November 2024. The additional time is intended to support all practices and providers, including GPs and allied health providers, to be ready for the changes to these important services.
New Chronic Conditions Management items will leverage MyMedicare and are likely to drive a wave of MyMedicare registrations by patients. To support continuity of care, patients registered with MyMedicare will only be able to access GP chronic condition management plan and review items through the practice where they are registered (patients not registered for MyMedicare will be able to access the items through their usual GP).
Primary Health Networks will be working with general practice teams to prepare by encouraging practices to:
- Register for MyMedicare
- Communicate and register their patients for MyMedicare
- Review processes, workflows and team roles to support more regular reviews
- Build the confidence and capability of Practice Nurses and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Practitioners in contributing to Chronic Conditions Management Plans and Reviews
- Use data in practice systems to identify and action Quality Improvement activities
Subject to the passage of legislation, from 1 July 2025, existing chronic disease management items will cease from 30 June 2025 including:
- GP management plans (229, 721, 92024, 92055),
- Team care arrangements (230, 723, 92025, 92056), and
- Reviews (233, 732, 920278, 92059)
These items will be replaced with streamlined MBS items for GP chronic condition management plans and reviews. New CCM MBS items and care model will:
- Encourage more regular reviews and ongoing care, by equalising MBS fees for CCM planning and review items.
- Strengthen the role of practice nurses and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners in assisting GPs in the preparation of chronic conditions management plans and reviews.
- Streamline referral and communication with the patient’s multidisciplinary team and allied health providers.
If you would like support from our team to implement this activity, please contact us at info@gphn.org.au.
Stay tuned for Activity 3 which will focus on MyMedicare patient engagement and registration, aiming to raise patient awareness, and have your practice identify what MyMedicare means for your practice team and patient care, so you can communicate this to patients.
