July 2023

The monthly E-News shares provincial program information and updates about the Facility and Community Engagement program. This information will be of interest to Medical Staff Association (MSA) support teams, but please feel free to forward the newsletter to your MSA executives as well. 

NEW: FE Knowledge Sharing Newsletter and Website

The latest Facility Engagement Knowledge Sharing newsletter sent to MSAs on Friday, July 7th, includes information about the new and searchable FE Knowledge Sharing website.

It features:

• A growing collection of engagement experiences from MSAs, physicians, and health authorities across BC, in one place and online. 
• Strategies and ideas to adapt and support your engagement work.
• A process to contribute and showcase your good work across BC.

CONTEST ALERT! 

Search the website, answer a few questions, and enter to win a Doctors of BC device charger or Bluetooth speaker. Open until July 31st.  

Full details are located on the website.

REMINDER: FCE Financial Reporting Deadline

ACTION: Financial reporting deadline: July 31, 2023.

MSA physician societies are required to reconcile their financials quarterly at minimum to ensure accurate financial reporting and budgeting. This also ensures that the FCE program has accurate information on program spending. 

Physician societies only are requested to provide the following documents within 30 days of the end of each quarter.

• Balance sheet.
• Income statement from your accounting software*.  

*If you are using QuickBooks, the external financial system report is called the Profit and Loss Report and for Sage users it is called the Balanced Income Statement.

• Please send the above documents to engagement@doctorsofbc.ca by July 31st
• For additional reconciliation support, please refer to the Facility Engagement website.

If you are unable to meet the deadline or require further support, please contact engagement@doctorsofbc.ca.

REMINDER: FEMS Changes and Updates

Just a reminder as a follow up to June's changes to FEMS and the claims approval process, we provided some updates on July 4th to the processes and some upcoming enhancements to these changes:

We want to let you know that we are working closely with our software developer on a solution that will improve the workflow by shifting approval privileges back to FEMS site administrators. These upgrades will be made as soon as possible after we complete consultations with a user group over the next week or so.

Until then, we are here to help reduce the current administrative requirements for approving supplier claims and expenses. We have created a pair of short videos for your review. The first video discusses administrator timesheets and how to maximize the value of your bookkeeper to manage internal operating expenses.  The second video demonstrates the workflow for approving third-party supplier claims and sending them for approval to the MSA executive.

This workflow is temporary, and we expect approval of these claims to be moved back to administrators soon. The goal is to eventually eliminate any requirement for an executive member to approve claims in FEMS.

We hope that this information is helpful to you. Please let us know if there is any other way that we can assist you in finding interim solutions for your site before the FEMS upgrades.

If you have any questions, please contact femssupport@doctorsofbc.ca

TIP: Submitting Activities to SEAT

Ever noticed that some of your SEAT designated activities in FEMS are not showing in the SEAT Database?

It might be that your SEAT activities are stuck in ‘Draft’ or ‘Info Required’ status. In order to submit them for SEAT review, start by following the steps below to filter for incomplete SEAT statuses.

Next, open the activity and click ‘Edit Activity’ to complete any missing information. Then be sure to click ‘Submit’ on the SEAT tab.

If you have any questions or experience any issues, please be sure to contact SEAT Support at seatsupport@doctorsofbc.ca.

TIP: FEMS Tricks

Every month, we will feature a timely update on how to use FEMS to your best advantage.

July is a good time for a quarterly budget and general FEMS review, as June 30th represents the end of quarter one of the fiscal year. 

We have created a great resource on all aspects of a quarterly review, including steps to follow, things to look at and adjust, as well as a host of other items that will set you up for success in FEMS.  

This is also a good time to review claims in FEMS that are in draft status and get them completed and ready for payment, or delete any duplicates or old claims that are stale.  Please consult this tip sheet for more information.

If you have any questions, please contact femssupport@doctorsofbc.ca

TIP: PM Helpdesk Lunch and Learn Library

The FCE provincial office, in conjunction with the PM Helpdesk Consultant, Erica Kjekstad, have created a library document of all of the past lunch and learn sessions from 2021 and 2022.

The 2023 library document is now live and will continue to be updated each month with current information.  

If you have any questions, please contact engagement@doctorsofbc.ca

FYI: MSA Administrator Lunch and Learns

Our last lunch and learn before the summer hiatus occurred on Tuesday, June 13th.  We will return in September, so look for a new set of calendar invites coming late summer.

If you have great ideas for topics for our community building and/or learning time together, please let me know at pmhelpdesk@facilityengagement.ca – we'd love to hear from you!