With family doctors retiring, fewer graduating family medicine residents are interested in starting a family practice or becoming a small business owner. As Family Health Organization (FHO) doctors face added administrative burden from an increasingly complex billing model, this lecture was created with the aim of simplifying billing for new doctors and make it easier for new doctors to enter comprehensive family practice.
The lecture content was developed as part of an academic project with residents Drs. Abir Islam and Vivesh Patel, and evaluated with the residents of Sunnybrook Family Health Team. The presenter would like to acknowledge Drs. Sharon Domb and Stephen Singh for reviewing the slides and providing feedback.
š§š¼š½š¶š°š šš¼šš²šæš²š±:
0:00 - Intro
2:58 - Resources
6:38 - Capitation & How much you make in a FHO model
14:14 - Shadow Billing
15:50 - Pros & Cons of working in a FHO model
19:01 - FHO Billing Codes
33:13 - Specific Premiums (Home Visit, Long-Term Care, L&D, Palliative)
š„š²šš¼ššæš°š²š:
1) FHO Family Medicine Billing Practice Cases (Pt 2): https://youtu.be/mpjAn9qBdGI
2) Income Stabilization & New Grad Entry Program (NGEP) (Pt 3): https://youtu.be/dt0TdpM1ww4
3) Intro to Family Medicine Billing for PGY-1: https://youtu.be/uJRV8ElsCGs
4) Intro to Family Medicine Billing for PGY-2: https://youtu.be/Xvqo6NC1t_c
5) How do Doctors get paid? https://youtu.be/X5uOkB0BuW0
6) How to Read Your Remittance Advice: https://youtu.be/-BK1lXjrzAc
**2023 UPDATE: NEW SGFP BILLING GUIDE: https://sgfp.ca/rails/active_storage/blobs/proxy/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBbDRFIiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--a86bf4480d7fefbed6172fa1e1bc4751b516cec2/SGFP%20Billing%20Guide%20APRIL%202023%2002_May_2023.pdf
šš¼š»š³š¹š¶š°šš š¼š³ šš»šš²šæš²šš:
There are no conflicts of interest to disclose. This section on billing is based on personal experience and it does not necessarily reflect billing or other guidance from the OMA. For specific questions about billing following this presentation, there are resources on the OMA website, or you can contact the OMA directly at economics@oma.org. All physicians must personally read their MOHLTC fee schedule preamble and be responsible for meeting all criteria for the appropriate billing of the services they provide.
#FamilyMedicine #FamilyDoctor #billing
Hi everyone it's Dr Steph I'm an assistantĀ
professor at the University of Toronto where I teach the financial literacy curriculum recentlyĀ
I worked with two residents doctors Abir Islam and Vivesh Patel on an academic project to developĀ
and evaluate these this lecture as a resource for new family doctors as we already know a lotĀ
of family doctors are retiring and new grads don't want to start new practices and become smallĀ
business owners so hopefully by providing more resources to new grad
s like this it will easeĀ
the transition to practice and reduce burnout so the FHO or the family health organization modelĀ
is a type of billing model for Ontario family doctors and it is the most complex billingĀ
model it is complicated because it is like learning a new language there are a lot of rulesĀ
and sometimes those rules change frequently so it took me almost a month to think about how to teachĀ
this in an organized and simple manner so I've developed I've broken it up into two parts a
ndĀ
I'll also try to give some tips that our Clinic uses when billing as well if you do have anyĀ
additional tips for the new grads or new family doctors please leave a comment in down below so toĀ
talk a bit about my own practice I do addictions and Family Medicine I have a roster of aboutĀ
900 patients and I work two full days of family medicine as the FHO lead and then on the otherĀ
days I do addictions inpatient and outpatient clinics so in this photo I'm with the team ofĀ
students and resid
ents in my addictions clinic in terms of what I what else I do in the otherĀ
time I also develop and give lectures as I am doing here with the undergrad medical students IĀ
do research and I also have an administrative role at the hospital when it comes to doing EDI work onĀ
the weekends I record my lectures so that Learners across Canada can access them for free and I alsoĀ
supervise you know Psychiatry and Family Medicine residents and clerks five days a week so if youĀ
want to join me in clin
ic feel free to reach out leave a comment comment and then also feel freeĀ
to support the Channel with a like or subscribe I don't have any conflicts of interest to disclose um so these slides were just made as part ofĀ
an academic project with two PGY-2 residents who are at Sunnybrook I just want to give creditĀ
to all of the residents at Sunnybrook whom we've tested this lecture on as well as Dr SharonĀ
Domb and Dr Steven Singh who is part of the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster andĀ
also chair of the Oma section on palliative care so I always wanted to start with the resourcesĀ
because that is literally the most high-yield part so 90 of what you have to know probablyĀ
comes into these couple of next slides so first of all if you're following alongĀ
with this lecture especially as you go into the practice cases section I do encourageĀ
you to have a second screen open where you can search up codes using these resourcesĀ
the First Resource is the SGFP billing codes documents a
nd so this is a very condensed documentĀ
that can be really helpful for just doing a quick search of different billing codes the oneĀ
downside is that it is a bit outdated it's from 2015 so I think if they ever end up making aĀ
new one I will link that in the description below um the other resource that I really like isĀ
the first five years in Family Medicine Family Practice Facebook group um I like this resourceĀ
because it not doesn't it doesn't just have um people in the first five years in
it thereĀ
are people who are uh past their five years and extremely experienced in their knowledge ofĀ
not just um practice management billing but also when it comes to clinical cases so you'reĀ
not too sure about what to do about something either clinically or ethically like thisĀ
can be a good place to ask your colleagues the schedule of benefits is a very massiveĀ
document and if that SGFP document that you have doesn't really give you what you're looking forĀ
or you want to go into a deeper
dive into certain billing codes you can look them up in the scheduleĀ
of benefits now just something to note is that there is a FHO Physicians billing guide but it isĀ
a bit outdated as there are some codes on there that are now obsolete so for example like youĀ
used to be able to get five dollars per patient rostered but not anymore so I guess the only thingĀ
is it might be able to provide some helpful info on rejection codes or what the bonus that you'reĀ
getting is for or let's say when you'r
e reading through your RA or remittance advice which isĀ
like a receipt that you get from the Ministry of Health you can kind of look through that toĀ
get some understanding of the items on your RA so like I said before billing codes are changingĀ
constantly and in fact in the span of one year a lot of the virtual care billing codesĀ
have changed usually I will add updates to the description or pinned comment part ofĀ
this talk as I can't edit a video once it's been uploaded so if you also want
to get updatedĀ
information this is where you can find it as well and just for a refresher on billing because let'sĀ
say you're not working in a FHO or you just want to get some baseline understanding of billingĀ
feel free to check out these two lectures that I've recorded in the past for residents as wellĀ
and if you want to know a bit about some of the changes that's been happening to the billingĀ
codes please check out the pinned comment and description section of those videos now whenĀ
it co
mes to different billing models in Family Medicine there are so many different typesĀ
so many different acronyms out there today we're going to be focusing specifically onĀ
the FHO model billing model but everywhere everything else like the FHG fee for serviceĀ
and FHN are other types of billing models feel free to watch this particular video I'll linkĀ
it above and in the description for a bit more of an overview on all of them but for the today'sĀ
purposes we're going to focus on the faux mode
l so the main difference between the faux model andĀ
the other models is that it's meant to incentivize comprehensive and preventative care whereasĀ
a model like fee for service May incentivize volumes of patients seeing for instance soĀ
how does this capitation work and how does capitation help incentivize comprehensive careĀ
well a capitation is kind of like a subscription fee that is paid per patient to you on behalf ofĀ
the Ministry of Health on behalf of OHIP for you to provide this their c
are to care for themĀ
as a whole and note that all key terms in my lecture is in blue now capitation consists of aĀ
base rate which is paid to you based on the age or the sex of the patient roster to your practiceĀ
so for example this 24 year old male you might get 90 bucks per year on that on that patient or youĀ
might have another patient 24 year old female you might get 199 bucks for them instead on average itĀ
comes out to be about 280 dollars per patient per year so let's dive a little bit
deeper into thisĀ
because it can be a bit more detailed and and out so capitation consists of the base rate so theĀ
base rate is basically meant to kind of mostly replace those fever Service Billings otherwiseĀ
build in a FHG model or in a Fee for service model and it includes the comprehensive care payment soĀ
you know as part of providing that comprehensive care and then also includes an access bonus whichĀ
is deducted from your base rate if there if there is a lot of outside use and if there
is noĀ
outside use then the bonus gets paid back so this is a chart that I've kind of which I'veĀ
taken from this website down below and it kind of gives you a little bit of the breakdown betweenĀ
the three components of what makes up a capitation now it looks like you know it looks like it'sĀ
like quite a lot per patient per year but you it's also unrealistic to expect to receive theĀ
full amount right because sometimes especially if you're practicing in an area with a lot of virtualĀ
walk-in c
linics or in-person walk-in clinics you know it can often reduce your access bonus byĀ
quite a lot if your access bonus starts going into the negative then it starts cutting intoĀ
your group's access bonus so your group meaning the clinic of where everyone else is working withĀ
you right all the other doctors working with you and so it kind of depends on your governance modelĀ
of your clinic to ensure whether there is some sort of payback policy often we have about sixĀ
months to retroactively d
e-roster the patient and so in that case then the patient if they're not onĀ
your roster then they'll take away the capitation payments as reconciliation for the month andĀ
you'll just get paid for for them as a fee for service patient um so the other thing to theĀ
other assumption I guess these charts make is that they assume equal distribution across age rangeĀ
but in fact roster income does vary quite a lot depending on age and gender distribution so it'sĀ
really hard to kind of answer the qu
estion how much exactly do you make but let's try to do workĀ
through a bit of an example to help you understand so generally speaking a lot of doctors will askĀ
okay how many patients should you kind of roster uh for how many days that you work the generalĀ
guideline is about 150 to 200 patients rostered per half day that you work let's assume thatĀ
you work about three to four days a week and the reality is most family doctors don't work fiveĀ
days a week simply because there is just a lot of
paperwork that you need you often need one dayĀ
as your administrative day to sort through all those labs consult notes prescription refills andĀ
things like that and the other assumption that we're making with um this this example is assumingĀ
that the patient does not use any outside services so assuming all making all these assumptionsĀ
let's say you have a 1200 patient roster at that particular capitation perĀ
year that comes out to be about $337 000. so that looks like it's quite a lot righ
t andĀ
in addition to that you might get Shadow billing which is a term I will talk about in a later slideĀ
you also want to keep in mind because you're a small business owner you will have overhead thatĀ
you have to pay and that in general comes out to be about 30 percent this can vary dependingĀ
on the geographic location that you work so after that it is about $236 000. and you alsoĀ
want to think about taxes because of course you want to pay taxes so let's assume using theĀ
53.5% marginal ta
x rate it reduces it comes out to be about $92 000 in terms of about theĀ
taxes you owe and that ends up with about $144 000. so you also want to keep in mind um youĀ
know this income it does not include all the time you spend doing paperwork billing reviewingĀ
charts and things like that um or participating in continuing medical education or CME those are allĀ
things that you would have to pay for yourself or do on your own time and you're not really gettingĀ
paid for that in the past you might
see a billing code like Q555 to cover CME but that is nowĀ
obsolete and also remember not all doctors have a hundred percent of their patients rosteredĀ
so it makes it more complicated to exactly figure out how much you make when there might be feverĀ
service coming in or there might be full bonuses coming in as well preventative care bonuses thatĀ
I'll touch on in the next couple of slides so how does this look like when it comes to comparing aĀ
faux model with other payment models so comparin
g comparatively for the same around around the sameĀ
roster size you might think that the faux model does end up paying more but you also want to keepĀ
in mind that the purpose of the full model is to incentivize comprehensive care not Rapid CareĀ
so I don't want you to just look at this slide and think okay I'm going to just roster a lot ofĀ
patience because you also want to remember the priority is to be a good doctor first you want toĀ
provide good care which means being available to patients
rostering too much might result in a lotĀ
of outside use which decreases your access bonus and now there is also a cap to how many patientsĀ
you can roster and that cap is at 2400 after that cap you no longer really get that comprehensiveĀ
care or base rate capitation it's just kind of as like a fee for service model so you also wantĀ
to remember that with increased patient volume comes increase administrative burden and thatĀ
part is unpaid so while you might be earning a high salary you'll al
so be working quite longĀ
hours maybe evenings and weekends so you have to think about how much work-life balance you wantĀ
to have it's not always just about the income okay so now let's touch on Shadow billing IĀ
used this term earlier so what does it mean basically Shadow billing is when you Bill forĀ
each billing code but you don't get the full amount of it you only get 15% of that code whenĀ
you're working in a full model and the reason why is because there are several billing codesĀ
that a
re considered in basket which means that they're part of that subscription you're alreadyĀ
expected to provide those those services so you only get maybe like a shadow of that particularĀ
billing quantity and also it might be a way for the ministry to kind of track um what type ofĀ
diagnoses you're seeing or how many patients you're seeing if you're kind of billing for themĀ
and receiving a shadow billing code for this um now there are other codes that are calledĀ
out of basket codes and those o
ut of basket codes those are the ones you get to keepĀ
a hundred percent of instead of a fifteen percent and often those codes are found in the OBĀ
or ER or palliative section of the SGFP document so how do you know if something is um like inĀ
basket or out of basket you can tell by this little symbol right here the N and the O soĀ
basically the N just indicates that the code is an out-of-basket code if you're working inĀ
a thin a family health network or if it's an O beside it it just means tha
t you're basicallyĀ
working you get that out of basket in a FHO so that's like a visual trigger to help youĀ
recognize what is considered in or out of basket so let's talk a bit about the pros and consĀ
of working a focus when a lot of people are graduating they're thinking okay should I shouldĀ
I join a foe or should I not or should I join any of the different other practice models outĀ
there so the main benefit I guess of joining a foe is that it incentivizes comprehensive careĀ
that's the pur
pose of why it was created so if you're someone who wants to provide you knowĀ
Cradle to grave Family Medicine working a film might be a good way to do that especiallyĀ
if you want to do mostly Family Medicine um the other benefit is that because it'sĀ
a capitation that's paid to you monthly you still can get paid if you're taking time offĀ
so for example um let's say you need to take time off to find a Locum it might be easierĀ
to do that comparatively to a fee for service like enhanced fever s
ervice type model like figĀ
or purify for service because you know locums might not be able to see as high volumes as youĀ
can and so it might be you might be able to kind of pay them and still be able to afford a certainĀ
Locum when you're in a foe for instance likewise you also if you do like the longitudinal type careĀ
these patients are rostered to you right so these are your patients and now you're responsibleĀ
for for their longitudinal care in the future now what are the downsides of work
ing in a foeĀ
uh well I touch on this billing is more complex in a foe and it can be frequently affected byĀ
policy as we've seen in the past people who use walk-in clinics or telemed Services a lot canĀ
eat into your access bonus right now for this year um the $57 000 cap on any sort of work that youĀ
might do for in basket fee for Service Billings so let's say you might have like a walk-in uhĀ
day like a clinic day uh while working as a phone doctor for just patients to walk in um they mayĀ
no
t necessarily a roster to you um there's kind of like a cap for that right but this cap right nowĀ
is at a group level so even though you may have used up that fifty thousand fifty seven thousandĀ
you can start using other people in your clinics cap assuming they didn't exceed it but as of AprilĀ
1st 2024 that hard cap will now be changed to a solo level so each individual physician willĀ
have a cap of $57 000 and then if it goes beyond then it gets clawed back so and the otherĀ
thing to remembe
r is only in basket Services count in the hard cap so for example like pain clinicsĀ
they tend to use a lot of in-basket codes whereas for myself in addictions I build a lot of out ofĀ
basket codes so it doesn't really affect the cap for me um the other thing to remember is becauseĀ
you're responsible for your patients it can be difficult to take a really long time off comparedĀ
to working in a walk-in clinic where you do shifts and you can do a shift and be flexible aboutĀ
when you want to work
so you also want to think about your inbox management and whether otherĀ
people in your group can kind of cover for you so now let's talk a bit about the foe specificĀ
billing codes so I thought a lot about what is the best way to teach this in an organized MannerĀ
and so I figured you might as well just start from the very beginning when you obtain a new patientĀ
the premise of full billing is to have a patient roster and that roster is what contributesĀ
to your capitation payments every month
so when you're starting off from scratch you mightĀ
have a very small roster that's not paying very much so what I personally did before starting toĀ
convert to a foe is I started off billing as a fee for service in my clinic and that way I get theĀ
full billing code instead of the Shadow billing code for each patient so when you are rosteringĀ
the patient obviously you start with a meet and greet and you might Bill your a007 or your k131 orĀ
slash k132 codes for the patient depending on how I
guess comprehensive your discussion is and inĀ
order for the ministry to know that a patient is rostered to you you add a Q200 to that particularĀ
building code and that code is paid at zero um and if that if that patient is coming fromĀ
a long-term care home then you would add q202 when you bill um on your EMR system you want toĀ
remember to have the patient complete something called a patient enrollment and consent formĀ
because that is the physical form to show that they are rostered to you a
nd it will also be laterĀ
important to have this form when it comes to the virtual care codes as well now let's say theĀ
patient is unattached and they were admitted to an inpatient unit in the last three monthsĀ
then instead of adding the q200 you would add q023 as your visit code you might see thatĀ
in the previous that faux billing document that I showed in the previous slide you mightĀ
find that there are codes like q013 or q033 those now no longer apply so I'm just referencingĀ
this here as
a visual cue from the SGFP document in terms of preventative care screening is a bigĀ
component of working in a foe the main thing to note is that these are the most common codes thatĀ
I tend to bill when it comes to doing your annual physicals um the other thing to remember is oftenĀ
with doing screening you want to if the patient is at the right age or has the right risk factorsĀ
to remember to also build some fit counseling codes for the fecal immunological testing umĀ
and then when you send
out the fit kit this is an out-of-basket code to remember and thenĀ
the q0 what q152 is another billing code for when you get the result back from the fit andĀ
then you are telling the patient of the result now the other billing code I want to drawĀ
your attention to is another out of basket code because now that you're in a foe you want toĀ
be more Vigilant about a basket codes if you have a patient who has diabetes just make sure thatĀ
you see there see them for their first visit in person wh
ere you can build their k030 and makeĀ
sure you do a complete diabetes visit and then after that when you see the patient again youĀ
can see them virtually if needed just you have to remember to add the virtual care code k300Ā
for video and k301 for phone the reason why it's important to build this k030 code for yourĀ
diabetes patients is because once you've seen that patient on their third visit it unlocks anĀ
incentive code for people working in a faux model for instance and that is the q040 a
nd so thatĀ
gives you an extra sixty dollars for that patient now these are the preventative care tracking codesĀ
and the thing to note is that these codes don't pay anything right they just kind of help theĀ
system uh track uh what percent of your roster has kind of done their preventative screeningĀ
up until March 31st the other thing I wanted to point out is that let's say that a certain patientĀ
may not be eligible for a particular preventative care screening so for example if the patient ha
dĀ
a hysterectomy they're not sexually active or they had a mastectomy and so on then you can BillĀ
an exclusion code so the main purpose of these is that once you hit a certain percentageĀ
of preventative care screening then it can unlock certain bonuses which I'll touch on inĀ
the later slides some EMR systems can track this stuff without uh needing you to Bill anyĀ
of these tracking codes it is obviously very EMR dependent because some EMRs where you canĀ
just enter the pap smear code and the
n a date and they can run a search through their EMR but inĀ
other clinics you know the EMR may not be able to do this so for example let's say if you're usingĀ
a third-party company to track your Billings and your preventative care they might actually wantĀ
you to build the tracking codes to determine if you're meeting your preventative care targets nowĀ
the preventative care codes is based on an honor System so it's it's an honor System to determineĀ
what percent of your target population get
their preventative care and I think in April 2024 theseĀ
codes will become obsolete they're trying to um you know claw back these codes and the I guessĀ
the the in the money going towards these codes to go towards developing a complexity modifierĀ
um and then the other thing I just lastly I just want to point out about this slide is ifĀ
a patient refuses to do a pap smear for example then you can't bill an exclusion code it's onlyĀ
for these reasons that I have kind of outlined in the slide here
where you can kind of excludeĀ
them from the percent that you have screened for the screening activity report is something thatĀ
you can sign up for you can just use your one ID to log in and see the screening activity reportĀ
and this kind of allows you to see how how you're doing relative to your peers but also to see howĀ
much percent of your patients have done their screening if you and also what I like about thisĀ
is if you um go through the tabs you can actually see all of the the differe
nt patients names whoĀ
hasn't done their screening or who is overdue and so on and then you can provide that to yourĀ
office manager to reach out to them and ask them to come in to do their screening the importantĀ
reason why we would build these tracking codes is because they tell the system how much percentĀ
of our patient roster has done their preventative care and then that translates into a bonus so inĀ
around March 31st because it's an honor system that allows you to Bill one of these bonu
s I guessĀ
codes and let's say you meet the 80 percent Mark for basically every every single preventativeĀ
care or I guess you've done immunizations for like 95% of your children that are rosteredĀ
then at maximum you can get about like $12 800 um in terms of a bonus thatĀ
is paid out sometime in April and I just included the the way that you calculateĀ
your percentage screened on the slide as well um so like I said before remember thatĀ
some of these bonuses will be replaced by a complexity mod
ifier so when thatĀ
happens I'll update the description below um in April 2024. now the other codes that areĀ
remember that you have to remember to bill in a full model are for vaccinations so a commonĀ
one that we often see is for influenza and how you would build this in a foe it's a little bitĀ
different whereas when you were in a fig or a fee for service you might be billing g700 whichĀ
is this basic fee and now you are billing Q 590 if that's the sole reason and you can kind ofĀ
add it to g
590 which is the influenza shot code um and then don't forget about the um so the otherĀ
thing is don't forget about the preventative care codes um even when a patient gets the flu shotĀ
somewhere else like a pharmacy or another clinic and they told you they got their flu shot youĀ
also still want to add that patient as part of tracking for your preventative care bonuses oneĀ
other thing to point out I forgot to mention is if you're nursed as a shot and you didn'tĀ
see the patient then you would
n't Bill a q590 right you might build the g700 insteadĀ
so that is still kind of tracks the flu shot if you have a well child and they come in forĀ
their vaccines I've kind of listed the codes here first you want to make sure you BillĀ
your vaccine code and then if they're age eligible you want to add on their tracking codeĀ
and this is assuming that they have done all of their vaccines and they've been up to date onĀ
all their vaccines up to that 18 months mark and then the other thing to remem
ber becauseĀ
this is out of basket as well is if that patient coming in is 18 months old remember to add onĀ
an a002 for doing a Nipissing screen the other thing to remember is that if you have a childĀ
that's coming in that's less than one years old you can also Bill a q015 so this gives you anĀ
additional little bit of a bonus up to eight times you can build this for all of those newbornsĀ
that you see because you see them quite frequently now what about evening weekends and holidaysĀ
right th
is is something that is characteristic of working in a foe that you have toĀ
provide evening and weekend coverage so the Q Triple Eight is actually a new codeĀ
that they introduced in Jan in July 2022 for seeing rostered patients on holidays and weekendsĀ
and this is as part of the mandatory after hours shift that you have to do while working in a foeĀ
in order to build this code you have to have at least three pre-booked slots where the patientĀ
is where you would build a007 so this would be a
pre-booked and then the rest are can couldĀ
be like any sort of walk-in rostered patient and so this code you can bill for the rest ofĀ
the other patients not for your three pre-booked patients where you get the shadow billing ofĀ
A007 for instance and this code is out of basket if you are seeing a patient in the evening afterĀ
5 PM then you can add on a q012 billing code and the other thing to keep in mind isĀ
sometimes you might hear about the A888 code this code is now it's it's to avoid conf
usionĀ
A888 is different from Q888 if you are let's say working in a separate walk in clinicĀ
and you don't want to dock any of your faux colleagues from their access bonus thenĀ
you can potentially build a triple eight and that prevents negation of your access bonusĀ
so for more information on this I've kind of linked the document that or the bulletin thatĀ
explains this new code that was introduced now you'll also have some patients coming inĀ
who might have certain chronic diseases and there
are codes that are specific to foes for thatĀ
as well the ones I wanted to highlight for you is uh firstly the heart failure management incentiveĀ
which gives you 125 dollars which is a good bonus to have when managing a patient with CHF andĀ
in order to build this you need to be able to complete their CHF flow sheet and often yourĀ
EMR system might actually have that in there already and you need to have build two of thoseĀ
CHF diagnostic codes to build that bonus incentive yes this code can be
combined with the afterĀ
hours code the q012 for a bit of a 30 bonus on top of that if you saw this patient after hours theĀ
other code to point out is the smoking cessation counseling fee which you can combine with a k039Ā
which is the smoking cessation follow-up code this this code gives a little bit of a bonus to folksĀ
working in a faux model um now something I just wanted to point out is that when you see a patientĀ
for the first time for some issue and they bring up that they are a smoker
or you bring up in theĀ
conversation that they're a smoker um and this is the first time that you're talking about smokingĀ
you talk to them about whether they want to stop in the stop options to stop smoking you can add onĀ
the e079 code to your visit code a007 for instance kind of to cover that additional conversation youĀ
had with the patient but let's say if the patient comes and sees you later on in the future and youĀ
have a dedicated visit just to talk about smoking then you can build th
is k039 smoking cessationĀ
code with the q042 keep in mind that the k039 code is not a code you can combine with something likeĀ
an a007 that's why I suggest booking a separate dedicated visit just to talk to the patientĀ
about smoking so to incentivize comprehensive care in the area of home visits long-term careĀ
labor and delivery and palliative care the full model has access to some premiums when it comes toĀ
incentivizing those areas of comprehensive care so the first premium that I want to
point out is whenĀ
it comes to prenatal visits and you can try to Bill these codes for visits with pregnant patientsĀ
these are all out of basket codes so the thing to keep in mind is that if you Bill more than fiveĀ
of these four faux enrolled patients in their first 28 weeks of gestational age then that opensĀ
up a two thousand dollar bonus that you can get now when you are doing Pregnancy Care like you'reĀ
actually helping to deliver the baby um you know you can get access to some of these pa
rticularĀ
codes so the p0679 and 18 and the 20 surgical assist codes being able to build these codes allowĀ
you to end up with a bonus of five thousand if you have billed them for more than five patients orĀ
eight thousand if you've built them for more than 23 patients so if you have an interest in OBĀ
or you have a lot of OB patients it might be a good idea to join a foe because a lot of theseĀ
codes are out of basket and the I guess the good thing is if you see a certain number of theseĀ
patie
nts it allows you to get that annual bonus so and just remember from the previousĀ
slide you know if you are seeing them for the prenatal care you also can getĀ
a 2 000 bonus on top of that as well now termination of pregnancy these codes areĀ
not listed on the SGFP document but I want you to know about them because they are out ofĀ
basket so if you do have that interest in OB um and you want to counsel the patient or ifĀ
you're giving them a medication you're following up on them up to two visi
ts per pregnancy theseĀ
are the codes that I've listed on this slide now if you do palliative care and you also work inĀ
a foe there are some additional bonuses that you get when you build these particular codes whichĀ
I've just put on the slide for your reference and I've kind of pointed out to each of them withĀ
arrows here this allows building these codes for more than four patients opens up a bonus of twoĀ
thousand dollars and if you build these codes for more than 10 patients it opens up a
bonusĀ
of five thousand dollars now if you'd like to do home visits there are also premiums that youĀ
can get for doing home visits as well keep in mind that on your SGFP document you'll see theĀ
a901 that is now obsolete so it's a 900. um so when you Bill let's say these codes for more thanĀ
three patients for instance you would get a bonus of fifteen hundred and then so on and so forth itĀ
comes with an increasing bonus with that as well so if you work in long-term care it's the sameĀ
idea so
if you Bill certain long-term care codes for a certain minimum of patients like 12 patientsĀ
then that unlocks another bonus for you as well and then finally if you do procedures or you haveĀ
a procedure clinic as well if you build more than 1200 in procedures for your enrolled patients thenĀ
that gives you a bonus of two thousand dollars so there are a lot of bonuses out there for variousĀ
different aspects of providing comprehensive care and then finally if you also provide a hospitalĀ
hospita
list care for instance and you let's say build more than 2 000 in hospital care codes andĀ
I've listed these codes on the slide here you know this can give you a bonus of five thousandĀ
dollars now note that this also includes newborn care so h001 as well as care for um for newbornsĀ
in their sixth to the 13th week of gestational age so I care for pregnant people of 6th toĀ
13th week gestational age that would be a c007 um the other thing to kind of point out is theĀ
a933 is for an on-call asses
sment A c005 is for a consultation and c003n4 are General assessmentĀ
and reassessment codes for non-emergency hospital visits so if you are also in a rural area thatĀ
opens up a rurality bonus and you will probably know if you're in a rural area if your ruralityĀ
index is more than 39 and that you can find out um before you decide to locum you can ask theĀ
particular clinic or you can look this up online as well finally there is also a mental healthĀ
premium too so if you have enrolled patients
that have bipolar disorder or schizophrenia thenĀ
there isn't really any um you know um billing code I guess that this is tied to so you have toĀ
build a tracking code for the system to know um that you saw a particular patient that isĀ
bipolar or that has schizophrenia and so if you let's say you saw a patient you add on a q020Ā
you also build the visit code with the diagnostic code for bipolar disorder or schizophrenia andĀ
let's say you've built five of those that gives you a bonus of one th
ousand dollars so the finalĀ
bonus that is available to faux doctors is the administrative bonus and this is known as theĀ
group management and Leadership payment so this can show up on your RA if you are the full leadĀ
or the faux Vice lead and it comes up to be about one dollar per patient to a Max of the 25 000 thatĀ
gets paid to the foe so this is a bonus for you to help do the administrative work of managing um theĀ
Foe and sometimes there are third-party companies that can help with managi
ng the phone and soĀ
there are also bonuses that can go to them as well so in my next video I'll be going over some ofĀ
the practice cases and hopefully if things were very confusing to you in the beginning by doingĀ
the practice cases it will really solidify a lot of the info for you and um you know help youĀ
understand how billing codes and how combining billing codes work and a lot of the practiceĀ
cases were tested on Family Medicine residents at the Sunnybrook Family Medicine site so you ca
nĀ
kind of see how you score compared to what they ended up choosing as their answer as well so I'llĀ
see you in the next video thank you for watching
Comments
Woah !! As if the years of prep pre med, med school and residency werent enough ! A big bow to all our doctors in family practice !!
š§š¼š½š¶š°š šš¼šš²šæš²š±: 0:00 - Intro 2:58 - Resources 6:38 - Capitation & How much you make in a FHO model 14:14 - Shadow Billing 15:50 - Pros & Cons of working in a FHO model 19:01 - FHO Billing Codes 33:13 - Specific Premiums (Home Visit, Long-Term Care, L&D, Palliative) ** 2023 UPDATE - NEW SGFP BILLING GUIDE: https://sgfp.ca/rails/active_storage/blobs/proxy/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBbDRFIiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--a86bf4480d7fefbed6172fa1e1bc4751b516cec2/SGFP%20Billing%20Guide%20APRIL%202023%2002_May_2023.pdf š„š²šš¼ššæš°š²š: 1) FHO Family Medicine Billing Practice Cases: https://youtu.be/mpjAn9qBdGI 2) Intro to Family Medicine Billing for PGY-1: https://youtu.be/AveW_LYtqT8 3) Intro to Family Medicine Billing for PGY-2: https://youtu.be/P80tU_FIF3Y 4) How do Doctors get paid? https://youtu.be/X5uOkB0BuW0
when we talk about units "per year"; when does that year start? is it january-january or a different time period? Thanks so much!
Hey Dr. Steph, I had another quick question. For the prenatal care special premium, does this include P003/P004 for any patient? (Ex. If I do two P004 for one patient, and one P004 each for 3 other patients each). Thanks
Thank you for this talk. What is the minimum roster size for a fho?
Thanks for the video! This is so helpful for residents and new grads. I have a few questions/comments: 1. K039: Can you clarify what you meant by this being "not an actual code"? I have heard conflicting things as to whether it can be billed with A007/A001 and what "dedicated" means. 2. Palliative special access bonus: the first level ($2000) is available to anyone including those billing FFS. The other bonuses are available to those in a PEM (not just FHO). 3. Q152: It is available to anyone including those in a FHG who do not meet min rostering requirements. People in a PEM including a FHO (who receive preventive bonuses) are not eligible. 4. Q888: Can more than 3 appointments be prebooked and still be billed Q888? If the phone lines open in the morning and the patients call in asking to be seen and they present later the same day for their scheduled same day appointment, is that a prebooked appointment? Do the same rules apply for weeknight after-hours? Or are you billing A007 Q012?
So for home visit during weekday between it is B990 + B960 =63.9 š Considering travelling and time with a patient it is less than the clinic visit... I had seen somewhere in the past it was 120 per pt... Same shoking numbers for minor procedures - 27smthing... It takes about 30mins on average to prep, do and close... Who does negotiate those rates (OMA?) and how often those numbers are reviewed (inflation... cough)?
In regards to rostering patients, would you need to add the Q023A every time you bill? or is it just once? and once they are derostered, how do you let the gov know? is there another form that you send or is there an exclusion code? For Q codes in general, you can bill them with A or K codes? or it depends? For example, the Q015A for newborn episodic care, can you add that to an A007 for example? thank you :)
Hi Steph - thanks for the amazing breakdown! I am considering transitioning from a FHG to a FHO. I was also thinking about the fact that I may not make much in my first few months of being in a FHO, since my roster size will be small. You mentioned that you did FFS initially. I plan on doing this too. I was wondering if you were a member of the FHO when you were doing FFS and was it contributing to the 57k cap? If you were not part of the FHO while doing FFS, how were you able to roster patients at the same time?