We’ve just celebrated the Chinese New Year – the Year of the Dog. People born in Dog years display loyalty and honesty amongst many other good qualities. However it is said that they can also be critical – maybe overly so. Segueing to another Chinese concept, we meet Qi, the vital life force that flows through the body. Let’s put these together.

A wise man once told me that the three pillars (the vital life force) of general practice are quality, service, and finance. All three of these come together in the form of the Practice Incentive Payments (PIP) scheme. You can read about this here but in summary Accredited General Practices are paid amounts of money for reaching certain quality measures. These include planning the management of a proportion of patients with diabetes and asthma, and ensuring women are screened for cervical cancer. There are also Incentive Payments for managing aged care and quality in prescribing.

These payments were due for a change on May 1st 2018. Were they promoting the vital life force of General Practice, were they tick box exercises for busy GPs, or were they overly critical of General Practice, not focusing on true quality? Enter QI – Quality Improvement. Rather than Qi, QI may be an altogether different beast.

But!

The Department of Health has confirmed that the Practice Incentive Program Quality Improvement Incentive will now occur from 1 May 2019.

From their press release:

The Practice Incentive Program (PIP) has been a key driver in quality care in the general practice sector and the PIP QI Incentive will continue to build on this important work, further strengthening quality improvement in primary health care. The additional 12 months will enable the Department, with the support and advice from PIPAG, to ensure that any implementation issues are identified and addressed and that general practices have adequate opportunity to prepare. It will also allow the Department to continue to consult with stakeholders on refining the design of the PIP QI Incentive.

The changed time frame will mean that the following five incentives which were to cease on 1 May 2018, will now continue through to 30 April 2019.

The five incentives are:

Asthma Incentive

Quality Prescribing Incentive

Cervical Screening Incentive

Diabetes Incentive

General Practitioner Aged Care Access Incentive

The six PIP Incentives that continue to remain unchanged are:

eHealth Incentive

After Hours Incentive

Rural Loading Incentive

Teaching Payment

Indigenous Health Incentive

Procedural General Practitioner Payment

What next? Will the new QI beast be reflective of quality in General Practice? Will the measures align with what we as General Practitioners believe is high quality Great General Practice care? Or will it aptly be launched in the Chinese Year of the Pig in 2019?

For what it’s worth, here are my measurements of quality, service, and finance in General Practice – the Qi of GP:

Quality – Time and Presence with Our Valued Patients

Service – Charging a private fee to those who can pay, allowing us to be charitable to those who cannot

Finance – Running Practices efficiently and well, with clinicians as owners steering the course of patient centred practices.

I would love to hear other views on this. We are all professionals or patients or both and we can always improve. Let me know here on the blog (or on our website) – or, if you’re a GP, on the fantastic GPDU FB Group – where GPs are invited to a festival of education and collegiality (#FOAMed – #GPDU18) May 30 – June 1! My last quality ltip – for personally better Qi – is below!

Get a Great GP!

(Here’s some we made earlier)

Dr Nick Tellis

Dr Nick Mouktaroudis

Dr Gareth Boucher

Dr Penny Massy-Westropp

Dr Monika Moy

Dr Katherine Astill

We look forward to seeing you soon!

It’s 2018 and many of you will have made your New Year’s resolutions. Many of these resolutions will have been broken by January 15th! We’re past that date, so for those of you who are left, here are some free Fitness Tips to help you carry on and improve your health in 2018.

Number 3 Fitness Tip from Dr Nick Tellis and Partridge Street General Practice

Get to the Gym…or the Run…or the Swim

We’ve all had those days where we don’t really want to exercise. Abs may be made in the kitchen but they’re certainly not made in bed. Remove the obstacles. Have your gear out the night before – clothes, trainers, swimmers, headphones – whatever you need to Get It Done. Leap out of bed as the morning alarm sings, get your gear, and Get Out.

Once you’re at the gym or pool or about to start your run – Start! If you’re not feeling it after 5-10 minutes, stop and head home. That’s cool, it’s not your day. I can assure you following this tip will hugely increase the amount of exercise you do.

Get a great gym with Anytime Fitness Glenelg, just off Jetty Road, Glenelg!

dr nick lifting with chris (1) — Younger Fitter Training Partners – the Famous Chris Hooper

Number 2 Fitness Tip from Dr Nick Tellis and Partridge Street General Practice

Don’t be the fittest person

Here’s the easiest tip here – especially for those of you just starting out. It’s often said that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you need to find a new room. Training with people fitter than you will bring you up with them. Generally people fitter than you have been doing it longer than you have and have built up some great habits and great tips of their own. Let them lift you up!

My personal take on this is that I train with people younger and fitter than me. I take the opportunity to train with great female athletes – even though I’m nearly double their weight, I can almost keep up! 😎

Get some great training partners!

Run with Good Physio or Aspire Pilates and Physiotherapy!

Lift in the gym and Smash it in business with Sammie Johannes here, here, and here!

dr nick lifting with sammie — Ms Sammie Johannes – Business Development And Powerlifter

Ms Sammie Johannes – Business Development And Powerlifter

Number 1 Fitness Tip from Dr Nick Tellis and Partridge Street General Practice

**Rack Your &%*%ing Weights!**

You’ve got to the place of exercise and you’ve lifted/run/swam. It’s time. Time to put the little metaphorical cherry on that big beautiful exercise cake. Time for a little ‘accessory exercise’.

Rack your &%*%ing weights! Seriously! This is free exercise! You’ll feel better, your training buddies will love you, and your friendly gym owner will sing your praises (and maybe even put your picture up in the gym!). Routine will give you strength and is that extra 1% for you when motivation fails. Routine gets you to the gym. Routine gets your training partners to the gym. And the Routine of racking your weights is worth it’s weight in gold.

If you’re running or swimming instead of lifting – that’s cool too. Walk more. Walk to and from your run or swim. That incidental movement – briskly, to be truthful – adds up. It adds up to fitness. It adds up to cardiovascular health. It adds up to a little less weight around the middle. It Adds Up!

Get to Anytime Fitness Glenelg and hit Ryan up…and maybe rack a few weights 😉