PIP Program Resources - Quality Improvement

Quality Improvement 

Supporting learning that improves the quality of healthcare and the safety of patients.

Introduction

The Practice Incentives Program (PIP) Quality Improvement (QI) Incentive is a payment to general practices that participate in quality improvement to improve patient outcomes and deliver best practice care.

What is Quality Improvement?

Quality Improvement is foundational to contemporary high performing primary care. It includes team-based approaches, peer review, reflective practice, best practice and data analysis. It can improve uptake of evidence- based practices for better patient outcomes, better professional development and better system performance.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners defines continuous quality improvement as an ongoing activity undertaken within a general practice with the primary purpose to monitor, evaluate or improve the quality of healthcare delivered to practice patients.

Practice Incentive Program (PIP) Quality Improvement

Under the PIP QI Incentive, general practices work with their local Primary Health Network (PHN) to undertake continuous quality improvement activities through the collection and review of practice data on specified Improvement Measures.

Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) and other organisations funded under the Indigenous Australians’ Health Programme (IAHP) already have a well-established system of using primary health data to undertake quality improvement activities. These activities help improve the delivery of primary health care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. For the purposes of the PIP QI Incentive, IAHP funded organisations will continue to provide data against the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander National Key Performance Indicators (nKPIs), within their existing arrangement with the Department of Health.

Related Resources:

To understand the PIP QI requirements and PIP data governance arrangements, please refer to the following documents: 

• Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement Incentive Guidelines (Draft).pdf
• Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement Measures.pdf
• Practice Incentives Program Eligible Data Set Data Governance Framework 2018.pdf
• PIP QI Who do I ask.pdf
• PIP QI FAQs.pdf