Introducing POLAR Puffin: Less GPACI Admin, more time for what matters

General Practice in Aged Care Incentive (GPACI)

The General Practice in Aged Care Incentive (GPACI) was introduced in July 2024. It aims to support continuity of care and reduce avoidable hospitalisations for older people living in residential aged care homes (RACH), through proactive visits and chronic disease management.

The introduction of GPACI was in response to the Royal Commission into Quality and Safety in Aged Care and Strengthening Medicare, both of which identified the need to shift our focus towards our rapidly growing and ageing population.

For more information on eligibility and servicing requirements for GPACI – please refer to the General Practice in Aged Care Incentive program guidelines.

More GPACI practice resources

Introducing POLAR Puffin!

To overcome the common barrier of a high administrative workload associated with GPACI, Western Victoria PHN and Outcome Health worked together to create a solution – a new POLAR report called Puffin.

Puffin has been tailored to be used by general practitioners and practices to assist with visualising and meeting their GPACI quarterly reporting requirements, as well as optimising time spent on patient care. Puffin has been trialled with a small group of general practices in Western Victoria, with positive feedback in reducing time spent tracking GPACI requirements and reducing errors previously made in manual tracking.

Puffin is readily available at no extra cost to all current users of POLAR. It is currently integrated with Best Practice and Medical Director – soon to be available for ZedMed users.

Quality improvement activities

Below are sample MFIs demonstrating how to incorporate GPACI in Quality Improvement activities. These have been developed to assist general practices improve patient care and health outcomes, and to achieve the PIP QI requirements.

1. sample MFI - GPACI Care Planning
2. sample MFI - GPACI COVID Vaccine Eligibility
3. how to complete an MFI template

POLAR Puffin walkthroughs/additional resources:

Using POLAR Puffin for the first time?

When first using Puffin, it is recommended to extract an accurate list of GPACI-registered patients from PRODA - PRODA Walkthrough - Obtain list of GPACI registered patients.

1. POLAR Puffin Walkthrough - Patient Management
2. POLAR Puffin Walkthrough - Monitoring GPACI requirements
3. Puffin Demo | POLAR Knowledge Base | POLAR Explorer