Chronic Conditions Management: General Practice Activation Series: Activity 2 – 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.
Benefits for your team
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 identify and discuss anything that isn’t quite working as planned, explore changes, and keep everyone on the same page. With this structure in place, your team can adapt, refine their practices, and empower each member to thrive in their role.
There are a range of ideas outlined below for you to use to tailor and modify to develop your own plan for change at your practice. We recommend you document your plan using a Plan-Do-Study-Act Template.
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
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.
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.
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:
You may decide to enhance the role Nurses and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners have in care planning,
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)
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.
Explore Chronic Conditions Management Changes with your practice team
A summary of CCM changes is attached 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
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 provided below 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.
If you would like support from our team to implement this activity or for further information on MyMedicare CCM changes, please contact your Primary Care Engagement Officer:
Stacy Wilesmith: stacy.wilesmith@mphn.org.au
Alanah Christie: alanah.christie@mphn.org.au
Georgina Maher: georgina.maher@mphn.org.au
Dr Vimal Pasupathy: vimal.pasupathy@mphn.org.au
Charlotte Johnson: charlotte.johnson@mphn.org.au