May 28, 2024

LFP Payment Schedule for clinic-based and facility-based care

Doctors of BC and BC Family Doctors continue to work with the Ministry of Health to refine and improve the Longitudinal Family Physician (LFP) Payment Model. We continue to listen to your feedback and adjust the payment model to address your concerns. To submit questions or feedback, please email FP.Billing@doctorsofbc.ca.

In this newsletter, we are providing information on the following:

New LFP Payment Schedule for clinic-based and facility-based care
Supporting you in this transition
Upcoming LFP facility-based care billing webinars

LFP Payment Schedule - effective June 24

On June 24, billing will begin for inpatient care, pregnancy & newborn care, long-term care, and palliative care in facilities.

Today, we are sharing the LFP Payment Schedule that details how to bill for both clinic and facility-based care. This new payment schedule will be effective June 24, 2024.

Highlights include:

Longitudinal family physicians who bill the LFP Payment Model for clinic-based care can start billing for facility-based care on June 24. (Billing by longitudinal family physicians remunerated under other payment models will start at a later date.)
Locum physicians will be able to bill facility-based care from the outset.
Physicians will be able to choose which facility settings they wish to bill under the LFP Payment Model and can remain with fee-for-service/alternate payment, if they wish.
Physicians will need to register for the settings they wish to bill under the LFP Payment Model.

To incorporate facility-based care, most of the payment schedule has changed. We recommend that you review the payment schedule in full, even if you do not provide facility-based care. Until June 24, the current payment schedule (dated March 2024) remains in effect.

BC Family Doctors’ Simplified LFP Guide has been updated to include the new time and interaction codes for facility-based care (member-login required). The Doctors of BC and BC Family Doctors compensation calculators have also been updated.

If you are not already a member of BC Family Doctors a two-week trial membership is being offered. Learn more about this, as well as member benefits, on the BC Family Doctors website. Not sure if you are a member? Email sgp.office@doctorsofbc.ca.

Supporting you in this transition

Moving from current compensation models and funding supports to new ones is a significant transition. We know this brings hope and anticipation for many of you, but also uncertainty and worry. We have a vast array of communities, practice models, health authorities, and rural/geographical differences in care delivery. This means the changes impact physicians in different ways. More important, however, are the ways in which we are the same: our focus on exceptional patient care and our commitment to fair compensation for all physicians.

With your input and feedback, we’ve made countless improvements to the clinic-based model and will do the same for facility-based care in the upcoming months. We are also finalizing details of additional FPSC support to help you navigate this time of change and to give you more time to transition from the current funding and models of care to the new LFP billing codes for inpatient care and FPSC payments. Details of this will be shared shortly.

Learn more in our recent joint Presidents’ Letter.

LFP billing webinars

There’s still time to register for the remaining facility-based care billing webinars:

How to get started: Inpatient care: Thursday, May 30, 2024, from 6-7:30pm.
Register here.
How to get started: Pregnancy & newborn care in hospital: Tuesday, June 4, 2024, from 6-7:30pm. Register here.

The webinars will review:

Eligibility and registration
Time codes
Interaction codes

As there is a lot of LFP Payment Model content to cover, the webinars will not provide additional information about FPSC supports for these areas of care. That information will be provided separately.

As space is limited, webinar registration is open only to family physicians and residents. We will share the recordings shortly after the webinars, including the recording from yesterday’s webinar about billing for care in long-term care and palliative care facilities.

Need more information?

Write us

Email: FP.Billing@doctorsofbc.ca

View our information online (member login required)

Doctors of BC: doctorsofbc.ca/new-payment-model
BC Family Doctors: bcfamilydocs.ca/lfp-payment-model
BC Government website: gov.bc.ca/MSP/LFP (login not required)