Ministry of Health payment for physician community planning in response to COVID-19

Since March 15th, Divisions of Family Practice, Medical Staff Associations, health authorities and other primary care partners throughout the province have taken and continue to take action to rapidly reorganize and stand up services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the height of the pandemic, the Ministry of Health and Doctors of BC were working behind the scenes to clarify how physician planning time would be supported.

A standardized approach has now been developed for remuneration of physicians’ time and expertise for their planning work during the pandemic. Physicians will be compensated to a maximum of 35 hours in total for active planning performed between March 15^th and June 30^th at the relevant committee sessional rate, provided the following criteria are met:

• Meetings must be about service delivery planning, re-design and implementation related to provision of patient care at a community, facility, regional and/or provincial level in response to COVID-19.
• The planning work is extraordinary, and goes beyond usual department, division or medical staff association (MSA) meeting – planning for physicians’ offices and patients will be not compensated, and
• Physicians are active in the planning - payment will not be provided for passive attendance at meetings.

Payments will be made to physicians through Divisions or MSAs where they requested physician involvement. For planning work explicitly initiated by the Health Authorities outside of MSAs or Divisions, physicians will be compensated directly by the applicable health authority.

Payment and invoicing

Physicians should submit their invoices to the MSA/Division which requested physician involvement. Ministry reimbursement for MSAs or Divisions will be coordinated through Doctors of BC.

All invoices must be confirmed with a signature by a health authority designated representative (when submitting invoices to a health authority) or Division/MSA executive (when submitting invoices to the MSA/Division) and must state the date and number of hours engaged in planning activities.

If the physician has already been compensated, no further action is required. The health authority or Division/MSA will let them know if any additional information is needed.

MSAs and Divisions must submit the accompanying excel template that provides information on all invoices, with an accurate accounting of costs, to Doctors of BC by July 31^st. 

MSAs and Divisions, please send your list of invoices to View Email Addressengagement@doctorsofbc.ca (MSAs) or View Email Addressdivisions@doctorsofbc.ca (Divisions).