June 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, so please feel free to forward the newsletter to your MSA executives as needed. 

FEMS Updates to Claims Approval Processes

The following updates to the claims approval process occurred June 13th in FEMS:

1.   FEMS Claims Approval Process Change

Effective immediately, all supplier claims in FEMS will require physician executive approval. Site administrators will no longer be able to approve non-physician claims.

What is Changing?

All claims other than physician claims will require a physician executive to review and approve the claim in FEMS. Site administrators can continue to enter supplier claims, including their own invoices, into FEMS, however, administrators will no longer be able to approve non-physician claims.

In addition, all claims must be manually approved. Automatic approval has been disabled to ensure that all claims are reviewed for appropriateness and accuracy.

What is NOT Changing?

Site administrators can continue to enter both supplier and physician claims into FEMS. Administrators will continue to be able to approve physician claims regardless of who entered the claim.

Why the Change?

In order to implement best practices in financial management, it is important to maintain appropriate checks and balances in the system. These updated requirements help reduce the appearance of any conflict of interest that may arise when managing the finances of the MSA. It also ensures that the physician executives, who have a fiduciary responsibility to the MSA, are exercising appropriate financial oversight. This process also aligns with acceptable accounting practices when managing the finances of the MSA.

2.   Weekly and Hourly Claim Limit

The following changes have been made in FEMS:

• The maximum number of sessional hours per day is set at eight.
• The maximum number of sessional hours per week is set at 32.

These settings are universal and can not be changed. In the event that a claim or claims exceed these limits, please contact engagement@doctorsofbc.ca for assistance.

3.   Late Claims

Please remember that physician claims must be submitted within 90 days of the activity date. Late claims can no longer be entered into FEMS.

Reminder banners will now appear on both the main FEMS page and above the date field when entering a claim.

Late claims can be submitted on paper to engagement@doctorsofbc.ca provided they qualify under the Doctors of BC Policy for late claims.

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

New Feature: Monthly FEMS Tip

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

Did you know that FEMS bundles approved claims and sends them for payment to the various payment processers (i.e., VoPay, VersaPay, manual payments) based on the MSA's settings in FEMS? 

For all FESC sites, claims are bundled and sent for payment bi-monthly, in the middle and end of each month. 

For physician societies, the setting can be either daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.  To keep payment processor amounts to a minimum, we recommend that claims be bundled and sent bi-weekly. To see how your society bundles claims, please check the settings tab in FEMS.

If a claimant has multiple claims within the bundling time period, then they will all be bundled into one package, known as a payment request. This mean that they will be paid in one dollar amount, which is the total of all claims within the payment request.

Finally, once the bundled claims are sent to the payment processor, the status will change from payment queued to payment processing.  Once that status has changed, the claims will be paid out within 3-5 business days.

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

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!

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