Quality Use of Medicines

What is the Division's Quality Use of Medicines (QUM) program?
Quality Use of Medicines is a comprehensive program that promotes judicious, appropriate, safe and effective prescribing and use of medicines. It is supported and funded by the National Prescribing Service (NPS), which provides independent and evidence based information about medicines to health professionals and consumers, ongoing training for program facilitators and resources for general practices.

What is the Quality Prescribing Initiative (QPI)?
The Quality Prescribing Initiative assists general practitioners to keep up to date with information about medicines through by participating in voluntary educational activities that are recognised or provided by the National Prescribing Service through the Quality Use of Medicines program.

How does it relate to the Practice Incentive Program (PIP)?
The Practice Incentive Program provides financial incentives to general practices for achieving certain quality and other service targets.

The Quality Prescribing Initiative is one of the incentive programs of the Practice Incentive Program (PIP).

What are recognised Quality Prescribing Initiative activities?
Mandatory: Clinical Audit
The National Prescribing Service provides at least two mandatory clinical audits each year that count towards the Quality Prescribing Initiative. General practitioners are notified when these audits are available via enrolment forms included in the NPS Prescribing Practice Review, which is sent directly to GPs throughout the year.

National Prescribing Service clinical audits are free. They may also be eligible for clinical audit points under the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners QA&CPD and/or the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine Professional Development Program.

For the clinical audit, general practitioners collect information on their management of the condition described in the clinical audit for approximately 20 patients. Expert feedback and/or an individual review is provided on completion of the clinical audit. GPs review the feedback, further review their patients and respond to a set of review questions. All data is confidential.

Clinical audits conducted by other providers may be recognised by the National Prescribing Service as Quality Prescribing Initiative activities, provided they meet specific eligibility criteria. You will need to contact the National Prescribing Service to check if the clinical audit is recognised for the Quality Prescribing Initiative.

Plus any two of the following three activities

• Divisional case scenarios
  Dr Jeff Robinson of the Mount Beauty Medical Centre is the GP facilitator for the Division's Quality Use of Medicine program. Each year, he facilitates discussions of National Prescribing Service case scenarios with small groups of at least 2 GPs.
  
  These sessions are held at the general practice face to face or via a teleconference, and provide current evidence based information on a particular topic in the Quality Use of Medicines program.
  
• Educational visits. These are provided at no cost to the practice. During them, participants discuss how current evidence on specific therapeutic topics translates into quality prescribing for patients. The visits to participating practices are booked and scheduled through the Division. Practice visits organised by the Division usually include an educational visit for each GP who is available, and 1 small group divisional case scenario discussion.
  
• Case studies
  National Prescribing Service case studies are included in the NPS News, which is distributed every two months to general practitioners along with their free copy of the journal Australian Prescriber. When GPs return completed case studies to the National Prescribing Service, they receive an aggregate of responses plus expert commentary.

How are Quality Prescribing Initiative payments paid?
Quality Prescribing Initiative payments are only made where general practices participate in a minimum of 3 eligible activities per full time equivalent (FTE) general practitioner per year. This number is determined by Medicare Australia, and shown on PIP statements. The February PIP statement provides the FTE number that will be used to determine if the practice has completed enough activities to qualify in that year.

The Quality Prescribing Initiative year runs from 1 May to 30 April of the following year. Quality Prescribing Initiative payments are made to practices as part of their May PIP payment. This means that the required number of activities must be completed by 30 April each year. 

Payment is based on $1 per Standardised Whole Patient Equivalent (SWPE) which equates to approximately $1000 per year for the average GP. For example:

A practice with 5 FTE doctors would need to participate in at least 15 activities between them, including 5 clinical audits. Some GPs in the practice may undertake more or less activities, so long as the practice as a whole averages 3 activities per FTE general practitioner.

Possible combinations of activities:
5 clinical audits + 5 individual educational visits + 5 case studies OR
5 clinical audits + 1 small group divisional case scenario (4 GPs) + 4 individual educational visits + 2 case studies OR
7 clinical audits (5 compulsory) + 6 individual educational visits + 2 case studies

Contact the PIP Hotline on 1800 222 032 if you have any queries.

Reporting National Prescribing Service activities
General practitioners provide their name, contact details, provider and prescriber numbers, in confidence, when they complete a National Prescribing Services activity.

The Division's program manager informs the National Prescribing Service of each of the educational visits conducted by Dr Robinson. The National Prescribing Service sends quarterly activity statements directly to general practitioners to advise which activities they have completed.

The National Prescribing Service informs Medicare Australia in April of each year of the number of Quality Prescribing Initiative activities completed by individual GPs. Medicare then sends quarterly PIP statements to general practices with an estimate of the number of activities that will be required to qualify for the Quality Prescribing Initiative in that year.

Contacts