PROJECT TITLE:

Evaluation of the Practice Nurse Incentive Program

CLIENT: Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing

DATE: July 2011 - April 2014

Kristine Battye Consulting Pty Ltd (KBC) in collaboration with ThincHealth and Professor Craig Veitch (University of Sydney) were commissioned to execute this national evaluation.

The evaluation aimed to measure the effectiveness of the new block payment arrangement to eligible practices (introduced in January 2012) as a mechanism to support practice nurses, Aboriginal Health Workers and allied health professionals to undertake a broad range of preventative and care coordination activities, extend or enable general practices across Australia to include practice nurses and other nominated workforce categories as part of their clinical team, and to improve access to primary health care. The block grant funding recognises the different qualifications of registered nurses (RNs) and enrolled nurses (ENs) and other workforce categories and encourages quality patient care through accreditation.

The Evaluation Framework and methodology for the evaluation study addressed the following key objectives:

  • development of a robust Evaluation Framework to ultimately assist in evaluating the Practice Nurse Incentive Program (PNIP) in relation to the program objectives
  • collection and analysis of baseline data, ongoing collection, analysis and reporting and trend analysis of data collected throughout the evaluation of the program
  • an evaluation of the PNIP in relation to the Program objectives; and
  • preparation of progress reports and a final report including an Executive Summary, outlining the findings of the evaluation of the program.