What’s New

Doctors with community offices in BC have invested time and expense to re-open their practices in a way that ensures safe in-person care for patients.

To help offset some of these costs, the Joint Collaborative Committees – a partnership of Doctors of BC and the BC government - are reallocating funds to provide a $1,000 grant to each eligible physician who  has implemented COVID-19 Safety Plan in their community practices.

Approximately 10 per cent of patients in BC’s medical system believe they’re allergic to penicillin, but 90 per cent of those patients are wrong.

“It’s a big problem because people are getting antibiotics that aren’t optimal for their therapy, and it’s costing the health care system quite a bit of money,” says Dr Tiffany Wong, an allergist in the Division of Allergy and Immunology at BC Children’s Hospital.

The success of Island Health’s RuralHealth TeleMS program can be measured in kilometers not driven, time not spent commuting, gas dollars saved, and energy retained by patients whose Multiple Sclerosis (MS) already depletes their resources.

Dr Sandesh Shivananda, Medical Director at the BC Women's Hospital Neonatal program has seen many significant changes in quality of care and teamwork since moving in the new Teck Acute Care Centre in 2017 – a centre with 70 beds that provides birth and post-birth care for mothers and new born babies.

Dr Carol Ward, a geriatric psychiatrist chose her specialty for the opportunity to connect with people. “I love stories. I love to hear people’s stories. And the longer you live, the better the story.” Growing up in the Maritimes, Dr Ward was surrounded by good story-tellers – “Generally speaking I find older folk are grateful and very appreciative of being able to share their lived experience.” Knowing her patients’ stories is her way to helping them. Dr Ward finds that it’s like being a detective – pulling all aspects of medicine and a person’s background together.

Diabetes care for children is team-based, says Vernon general pediatrician Eiko Waida. 

“There are a lot of people involved. We have the patient, the patient’s family, sometimes multiple families, the nurse, the dietician, administration, different pediatricians – industry is the other big thing. We have pump trainers out in the community. It’s a lot of players,” she explained. 

Effective March 27, 2020, the SSC has created two new fee codes to support COVID-19 related specialist work. These fees are temporary and are in addition to the fee codes that all physicians can benefit from. The new specialist fee codes include: 

• 10007 Specialist Email/Text/Telephone Medical Advice Relay or ReRX Fee
• 10008 Urgent Specialist COVID-19 Advice - Initiated by a Specialist, General Practitioner or Health Care Practitioner.

Click here for more information on all the new COVID-19 Fee Codes. Billing and fee related inquiries can be emailed directly to: economics@doctorsofbc.ca 

Every year, thousands of health care leaders and professionals around the world get together at the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI)’s four-day conference in Orlando to connect about the future of health care improvement.  

The most recent conference was held December 8-11, 2019 with 5,500 attendees from over 55 countries. As one of the most influential events in health care quality improvement worldwide, the Specialist Services Committee (SSC) was excited to be chosen amongst the tough competition to present a half-day workshop on BC’s Physician Quality Improvement Initiative (PQI).