Sarah books in for a Type 2 diabetes review. You both know she needs a GP Management Plan. You also both know what that means: forty-five minutes of clicking through clinical software after she's gone home, then trying to remember her actual goals.

Three weeks later the plan still isn't drafted. The MBS 721 item never gets claimed. The clinic loses $164.35 on a patient who came in willing to do the work.

Why GPMPs are the most underclaimed item in Australia

Services Australia publishes the data quarterly. Roughly 1 in 3 patients with a qualifying chronic condition has an active GPMP. The other 2 in 3 either never get one, or get one that never gets reviewed under item 732. The friction is the paperwork — full stop. Australian GPs aren't avoiding GPMPs because patients don't qualify. They're avoiding them because the documentation overhead doesn't fit a 15-minute consult.

The 6-minute GPMP

A compliant GPMP needs five things: the patient's chronic condition, current management, treatment goals, identified team members, and a review date. None of that requires a Wednesday afternoon block.

  • Capture the conditions during the consult — MedMETs pulls them straight from the clinical history pane.
  • Set 3 goals together. Plain English, patient's words.
  • Tag the team — yourself, the practice nurse, the relevant allied health.
  • Pick a 3- or 6-month review date. The system creates the calendar reminder.
  • Sign off. The plan generates, the 721 claim flags, the patient gets the plan in their app.

The revenue maths

Item 721 pays $164.35. A typical 6-GP clinic in Australia has roughly 600–800 chronic-disease-eligible patients on the books. If half of them ever get a GPMP, that's 300–400 plans × $164 = $49,200–$65,800 in claims that currently aren't happening. Add the quarterly 732 reviews ($82.20 each) and the same clinic is looking at $90k–$130k of underclaimed revenue per year.

The patients win too. A GPMP doubles the rate of allied-health uptake (RACGP) because it's the trigger for the Team Care Arrangement (item 723) that funds five subsidised allied-health visits. Most patients never know they were eligible.

Care plans built into the consult, not the afternoon backlog.See how MedMETs handles GPMPs

The fastest GPMP one of our clinicians has drafted using MedMETs was 4 minutes 12 seconds. The patient was still in the room. The plan went onto their phone before they hit the carpark.