March 2024

The monthly E-News shares provincial program information and updates about the Facility 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: FEMS Engagement Activities From Previous Fiscal Years Will Auto Close April 30th

Following up on discussion at the February 20th Lunch and Learn session on the upcoming FEMS updates, Facility Engagement would like to announce that the proposal to automatically close previous fiscal year engagement activities has been approved and will be implemented on April 30th, 2024.

What this means for MSA administrators:

• MSAs should assess current engagement activities in FEMS and encourage physicians to enter sessional claims prior to March 31st.
• Determine which engagement activities are completed and mark them complete in FEMS prior to March 31st.
• If claims are expected for work that took place in the 2023-24 fiscal year, ensure that there will be enough budget in the engagement activity to cover these claims during the accrual period.
• The accrual period runs from April 1st to 30th each fiscal year, during which time claims from the previous fiscal year can be attributed to engagement activities from that year.
• Because claims can be added to both the previous year and current year engagement activities during the accrual period, remind physicians to submit claims to the correct engagement activity, i.e., last fiscal or current fiscal year, based on when they participated in the engagement activity.
• For more information, please refer to the Financial Management Workbook.
• SEAT designated engagement activities reporting is due April 15th.  It is highly recommended that these reports are completed by midnight on April 30th, when all engagement activities from the previous fiscal year will be closed. Please see below for more information on SEAT designated engagement activities, and how to address those that cross fiscal years.

Engagement activities for the new fiscal year can be created at any time using April 1st or later as the start date. These new engagement activities will not be accessible until after the chosen start date and once a budget amount is added to the engagement activity.

On April 2nd, each MSA will be allocated their new fiscal year’s budgets in FEMS. Engagement activities for the new 2024-25 fiscal year can now be approved and budgets added. All previous fiscal year engagement activity budgets should not be adjusted during the accrual period.

On April 30th at midnight, all previous fiscal year engagement activities will be automatically closed in FEMS. Any remaining budget from these engagement activities will be returned to the unallocated budget amount and can be viewed in the financial overview section in FEMS. Note that any claims from the previous fiscal year that have not been entered and are still eligible claims (within 90 days of the activity) will have to be claimed against an engagement activity in the 2024-25 fiscal year.

For a reference of what other updates are coming in April, please see the linked communication from February.

Please keep an eye out for further communications on the FEMS updates, as well as tip sheets in the following weeks of March.

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

NEW: Tips for SEAT Updates - Results/Impact of Activity

Friendly reminder that the next Site Engagement Activity Tracker (SEAT) submission deadline for Quarter 3 and 4 is April 15th. Please update your SEAT designated engagement activities in FEMS with any significant milestones that occurred over the last six months before the deadline.

The “Results/Impact of Activity” field helps readers understand the value of the Engagement Activity (EA), what outcomes are possible, and if the idea is worth trying out at another site.  Some examples of a high-quality “Results/Impact of Activity” updates for ongoing and completed EAs are provided below:

Ongoing EA

"An evaluation form was sent to the committee members to evaluate the engagement activity for the 20XX/20XX fiscal year, 10/12 physicians rated every answer with "Strongly Agree" and comments included that "the project has facilitated a direct improvement in patient-care services at the hospital". This project is not complete and will continue in the 2024/2025 fiscal year. We are closing this out for 2022/2023 for bookkeeping purposes only and will re-post the project.”

Completed EA

"This project resulted in the development of a new lung cancer pathway that reduced time to treatment for patients from 55.7 days to 34.5 days. The multi-disciplinary group laid out a visual pathway of existing steps to identify delay, barriers, flagged mistaken assumptions, and increased everyone's knowledge about respective roles and requests. Physicians saw the impact of their decisions on the overall patient journey and the group identified where small shifts in roles could make a difference:

1. respirologists take multiple biopsy tissue in the initial diagnostic for BCCA molecular testing;
2. having investigations occur in parallel instead of waiting for one test result before the next;
3. improving coordination of processes with the BCCA

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

FYI: Financial Year End Dates and Deadlines

ACTION: March 29th, 2024

The last date for sites to request a funding gate for the 2023-24 fiscal year is Friday, March 29th at 4pm. 

ACTION: April 30th, 2024

The accrual period for claims to be entered in FEMS for the previous fiscal year is April 1st-30th.  Any claims and/or expenses that are to be paid with the 2023-24 budget must be entered in FEMS prior to Tuesday, April 30th at midnight.

ACTION: May 1, 2024

Engagement activities from the previous fiscal year(s) will be closed, and all eligible claims from the 2023-24 fiscal year will now be claimed against a 2024-25 fiscal year engagement activity and budget.

ACTION: May 31, 2024

The deadline for physician societies to submit their 2023-24 fiscal year end financial statements is Friday, May 31st.  Gated funding requests cannot be processed until completed statements have been received.

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

FYI: March Lunch and Learn

Our final Lunch and Learn of the fiscal year is coming up on Tuesday, March 19^th, 12.00 – 13.00 PDT, on Zoom.

• Community building – What I’ve done differently this year
• Learning segment – Your Year-End To Do list

Hope to see you then!

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

TIP: FEMS Tidbit of the Month

This month we are focusing on draft claims and how they can be managed by FEMS administrators. It is best practice to check for your MSA's draft claims on a monthly basis.

A FEMS claim can remain in draft status for two reasons:

1. The claim was saved, but not submitted. This can occur for physicians, allied medical staff, and administrators.
2. The randomly-selected end of claim survey was not completed by the physician.

FEMS administrators are able to see any claims in draft status by filtering the claim status field (see screenshot below).

By clicking on the claim, you will see two choices:

1.  Resume Draft - open the claim where it can be adjusted, if needed, and then submitted for approval.
2.  Delete - for those that are no longer necessary.

NOTE: The previous issue where the submit button was not visible at the bottom of some surveys has been rectified.

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

TIP: PM Helpdesk Lunch and Learn Library

The FE 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 2022 and 2023.

The 2024 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