Strengthening Medicare Primary Health Network (PHN) Allied Health Practice Support Toolkit

Overview

The purpose of this grant opportunity is to provide funding to the Hunter New England and Central Coast (HNECC) PHN to develop the PHN Allied Health Practice Support Toolkit. In the 2023-24 Federal Budget, the Government committed $79.4 million over four years from 2023-24 to 2026-27 to the PHN Commissioning of Multidisciplinary Teams initiative. This initiative, part of the broader Strengthening Medicare budget package, will strengthen the role PHNs play in commissioning multidisciplinary health care and extend PHNs’ role to providing practice support to private allied health, nursing, nurse practitioner (NP) and midwifery practices. To support successful rollout of this budget measure, the Government also agreed to fund the development of the PHN Allied Health Practice Support Toolkit. Whilst PHNs have a well-established role in providing general practices with practice support, they have not been resourced to extend this to other primary health care professionals. Consistent with the recommendations of the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce Report to support multidisciplinary team-based care, the objectives of the grant opportunity are to:  enhance PHNs’ support of allied health professionals working in the primary care system; reduce the time spent by allied health professionals on business administration and service integration, allowing them to spend more time on their clinical workload; and allow PHNs to build stronger relationships with allied health practices, leading to boosted overall system flexibility and capacity.  The intended outcome of the grant opportunity is to design and implement the PHN Allied Health Practice Toolkit, to complement and inform the practice support activities undertaken by PHNs. The grant to the HNECC PHN is to design and implement the Toolkit and is expected to commence from December 2023. To view the grant opportunity documents, please select the red Grant Opportunity Documents button on the left-hand side.