Did you know that you can bill for completing and sending in patient summaries, under the Longitudinal Family Physician (LFP) payment model? Further, Doctors of BC asked the Care Transitions leads to spread their successful work across the province. Here are the details:
Community physicians can create a summary of their patient’s pertinent medical and social history, either in response to a hospital admission, or proactively for patients that are complex or at higher risk. These summaries are then sent to Island Health where they are uploaded into PowerChart.
This may sound familiar to you, as Care Transitions has been working since 2015 to make it efficient and easy for you to provide your hospital-based colleagues with the longitudinal information they need to better support patient care.
Billable under indirect care
Under fee-for-service, this work was not funded by MSP. But things have changed with the new LFP payment model. If you’re practicing under the new LFP model, then you know that you can now bill for your time spent on indirect care and clinical administrative tasks. Completing patient summaries can be billed under indirect care, which means that providing this essential information to support your patients’ hospitalizations can be remunerated.
Leading the way for provincial roll-out
We have shown in our previous studies that patient summaries help hospital physicians understand the full context of our patients’ health. In fact, we are leaders in this area: Drs. Laura Phillips and Lisa Veres have recently been asked to co-chair a provincial Clinical Advisory Group through Doctors of BC, providing essential insight as the provincial Digital Health Strategy prepares to roll-out the capacity for creating and transmitting patient summaries across the province. Their leadership has been so important in developing and sustaining this important information sharing process, and it is wonderful that their skills and experience are being recognized by Doctors of BC.
The value of your longitudinal knowledge
A recent hospitalist survey revealed that hospitalists use patient summaries to assist with treatment and discharge planning and appreciate having access to up-to-date patient information that isn’t otherwise available to them in PowerChart, such as medical history, any specialists involved, and medications.
Dr. Tess Hammett, a hospitalist at Royal Jubilee Hospital, told us:
“I’ve found patient summaries very helpful. They help fill in gaps in the patient’s past medical history, and often clarify which specialist(s) follow(s) the patient longitudinally, which is often not otherwise evident. Some family physicians include their most recent visit note, if appropriate, which often relates to the problem the patient is presenting with and outlines the physician’s thoughts and next steps. I’m also comforted to see the summary as it lets me know that the patient’s family physician is aware of their admission to hospital.”
When & how to send in summaries
You can send a patient summary to Island Health to support a hospital admission, and you can also send them proactively for patients that you think are at high risk of ending up in the Emergency Department; for very complex patients; or for situations where you worry that patients won’t be able to communicate their health status well if they do end up in hospital. Click here for easy-to-follow steps
View your summary
To view your summaries in PowerChart, go to the Clinical Notes and Results Review tab, click on documents, and look for the “Primary Care Provider Patient Summary” document type. Summaries are date-stamped to show which is the most recent.
For more information
If you need any support or have questions, we are here to help. Please contact Kristin Atwood, Project Manager, [email protected].
To learn more about patient summaries, you can visit our website or read the project overview from Shared Care.
