April 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 Updates Now Live

April 1st has come and gone and the full set of updates has now been deployed into FEMS.  The full breakdown of the updates can be accessed via this linked communication from February and March 2024.

Here are a few tips to remember as we navigate these updated workflows:

1. When a new supplier is created using the Add New Supplier option in the supplier claims form, the supplier needs to be reviewed and approved by an MSA executive before claims can be approved.
2. For existing suppliers, when first adding a supplier claim, the Declare Relationship Status pop-up will show to enter the two questions that have been added to the supplier profile.
3. The button Submit an Expense is now exclusively for physician expenses. For supplier expenses, the button Submit Supplier Expense must be used.
4. The Approvals menu tab is now available for use by MSA administrators and executives, including the Bulk Claims Approval screen for MSA executives. NOTE: The two supplier questions must have been answered in order for the claims to appear in the bulk approval screen.
5. There are additional expenses categories available in the expense type dropdown (e.g. Taxi/Uber/Transit).  
6. All IOE expenses are now required to be entered in FEMS as a supplier claim, and approved by an MSA executive or administrator. There are expense types for each category of IOE. 

For full tip sheets on these and other FEMS processes, please visit the resources page on the FE website.

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

NEW: Provincial Evaluation Survey

Last year, as part of the provincial FE program evaluation, surveys were administered to medical staff members, executives and local/broader HA partners actively working with MSAs. The survey invitations were sent by FE’s external evaluation consultants, Ference & Company.

This survey was separate from the Doctors of BC’s annual Health Authority Engagement Survey or biennial Benchmark Member Survey. The FE evaluation survey was focused on measuring FE’s outcomes, and the aggregate results of the survey will be used to support ongoing learning and improvement opportunities to the FE Initiative as well as to communicate the impacts of the initiative to stakeholders at a facility, health authority and provincial level.

A Survey Technical Report that highlights the findings from the 2023 survey is available here for your information.

A second survey for 2024, will be released in the coming weeks to compare results over the year and help inform findings for the final program evaluation report. More information will be shared soon.

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

FYI: Important Dates and Deadlines for 2024-25

ACTION: April 15th, 2024

SEAT designated activity reporting is due for quarter 3 and 4 of 2023-24.

EVENT: April 16th-17th, 2024

Facility Engagement Provincial Summit and Social Events

April 16th 5-8pm Optional Social Event

April 17th 7:30am - 4pm Main Summit 

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 1st, 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 31st, 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.

ACTION: September 30th, 2024

The deadline for physician societies to submit their CRA information/tax return is Monday, September 30th, for those whose society year end is March 31st.

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

FYI: Knowledge Sharing Update

There are new ideas and activities on the knowledge sharing portal this month, including:

• Recruitment & Retention at BCCDC
• Partnering for Disadvantaged Patients Emergency Surgery in Victoria
• Collaborating for successful EHR implementation at Cowichan District Hospital

And in case you missed it, check out our March Newsletter that highlights emerging MSA-HA engagement trends and other successful projects.

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

REMINDER: FEMS Engagement Activities From Previous Fiscal Years Will Auto Close April 30th

Following up on discussion at the March 19th Lunch and Learn session, Facility Engagement would like to remind MSA administrators 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 now that the new fiscal year has begun:

• 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.

On April 2nd, each MSA was 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 were implemented on April 2nd, please see the linked communication from February.

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

REMINDER: 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

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