Allied health service event—individual patient attributable duration, total minutes N[NNN]

The individual patient attributable (IPA) duration must be recorded for each allied health service event.

Clinical care activities are those which provide a service to an individual, group or community to influence health status. These activities may or may not be in the physical presence of the allied health service provider, but the providers’ time must be specifically attributable to an individual patient.

Clinical care activities may be individual patient attributable (IPA), or Non-individual patient attributable (NIPA). It is recommended, wherever possible and practical, clinicians allocate time to an individual patient (IPA).

A clinical care activity is recorded as IPA if there is a patient identifier and documentation in the person's medical record. All other clinical care activity should be recorded as NIPA. NIPA is not to be included in this data element. It is recorded in the Allied health non-individual patient attributable and clinical support activity NBPDS.

The total IPA time involved in a group service event should be allocated based on the proportion of time spent with each person, or distributed proportionately amongst the persons who attended the activity, whichever is most practical. For example, an allied health service provider attends a conference taking 60 minutes which involves discussion on a total of 12 persons. Of these, the allied health service provider was involved with 5 persons. The staff member could allocate 12 minutes to each of the 5 persons.

Examples of IPA activities include:

• Face to face intervention/therapy with the person or parent/carer on behalf of the person

• Video telehealth intervention/therapy with person or parent/carer on behalf of the person

• Telephone therapy/intervention with person or parent/carer on behalf of the person

• An allied health service provider receives a phone call from a person asking about their home management program. The allied health service provider spends more than 10 minutes on the phone, providing education and modifying the home management plan

• A clinical senior oversees a clinician treating a person in an informal one to one staff supervision setting

• Treating bereaved relatives of a person with a known identification number

• A young person's carer is educated about a home therapy program

• Preparation of a handout or other product for a person/s with a known identification number

• Clinical record keeping/documentation for a person or group

• Persons who do not attend an appointment. Any activity related to a person who did not keep an appointment such as time spent waiting for person to arrive, rescheduling an appointment, preparation, documentation in record

• Evaluation and review of programs. Review of the processes in a current intervention e.g. a group session in order to plan the processes for the next session. The time should be assigned against the Unit Record Numbers (URN) of the persons in the group.

• Preparation time for a therapy session with the person

• Discussion about how to manage a particular person

• Reviewing current literature regarding a complex person being treated

• Case meetings, case consultations and ward rounds where a person was discussed for a minimum of 10 minutes

• Phone calls, correspondence, emails or other forms of communication to organise intervention/therapy

• Making clinical appointments/arrangements for delivery of care for an individual or group

• Triaging a referral if this process takes more than 10 minutes

Group

• Delivery of a group therapy programme where the person’s patient identifier is known and documentation is recorded in a patient’s medical record.

• Preparation that takes place before a group session to prepare the room or time taken after the session to tidy the room should be classified as IPA if regarding an IPA group.

Travel related to any of the above, for example travel to or from the location at which the service is provided is also included.

IPA classified activity is associated with all patient, episode and service event activity listed in the Allied health admitted patient care NBPDS, Allied health non-admitted patient emergency department care NBPDS and Allied health non-admitted patient care NBPDS.