Deadline for applications extended to 
22 December

In response to a number of requests, general practices and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) in selected regions now have until 2pm AEDT on Thursday 22 December 2016 to apply for stage one of Health Care Homes.

The ten selected regions are Perth North; Northern Territory; Adelaide; Country South Australia; Brisbane North; Western Sydney; Nepean Blue Mountains; Hunter, New England and Central Coast; South Eastern Melbourne; and Tasmania.

Go to the Tenders and Grants page on the health website to apply.

Questions about the application can be sent to grant.ATM@health.gov.au until 5pm AEDT on 16 December, 2016.

Identifying patients 

The Health Care Homes patient identification and risk stratification tool is currently being developed, based on the QAdmissions tool and the Hospital Admission Risk Programme (HARP). 

QAdmissions is a validated clinical risk prediction tool which can be used to assess a person’s risk of emergency hospital admission over one to two years. The tool was developed in the United Kingdom and requires some modification for the Australian population. The QAdmissions risk calculator is available here.

HARP is used to determine the overall risk of a person presenting to hospital in the next 12 months. The tool assesses presenting clinical symptoms, service access profile, self-management and psycho-social issues and classifies people into one of four categories (low, medium, high and urgent). More information on the HARP calculator is available here.

Although the Health Care Homes patient identification and risk stratification tool is not yet available, some general practices and ACCHS may already have data systems through which they can identify the likely patient cohort, based on the tier characteristics, QAdmissions and HARP. This is explained in the patient eligibility factsheet on the Health Care Homes page.

Updated FAQs

FAQs on the Health Care Homes website have been updated.

Webinars now online 

• The Australian Association of Practice Management payment management webinar is available here. The webinar was originally broadcast on 5 December 
• The Department of Health’s Becoming a Health Care Home is also available. The webinar was originally broadcast on 17 November. 

Key dates

• 22 December 2016: Applications for stage one of Health Care Homes close. Go to the Tenders and Grants page to apply 
• Early 2017 — Health Care Home practices/ACCHS notified of their selection for stage one 
• April 2017
  • training for the selected practices begins, based on modules and resources developed by Australian General Practice Accreditation Limited (AGPAL) 
  • practices can begin identifying patients for enrolment. However, patients will not be entered into HPOS until July 2017, when payments commence
• June 2017 — Health Care Homes will be registered with Department of Human Services
• July 2017 — Health Care Homes services start