Connect - October 21 Recap

CII/CPAR Connect shares recent milestones — demonstrating your impact on continuity of care across Alberta. Read on for updates and upcoming learning opportunities.

CII/CPAR Milestones

3.4 million patients are on a CPAR panel
Over 45,000 conflicts resolved last month - thank you!
Provincial Conflict Rate is 11.7% (down slightly from last month)

Updates

Conflict Work Continues

The provincial Conflict Rate has been stable, sitting at between 11% and 12% over the last six months. While this plateau is a relief after many years of rising rates, we’re asking clinics and teams to continue working to lower conflict rates to improve care continuity for Albertans.

Implementing or improving a conflict reduction process can be a great way to fulfill a Standard of Practice or Practice-driven QI activity for Physician Practice Improvement Program (PPIP) requirements. This can be done for an individual physician, or for an entire clinic! This sample PPIP Action Plan may help physicians and teams get started.

Thank you for ongoing efforts to reduce CPAR Conflicts.

Telus CHR

Encounters are live and flowing to Netcare from participating CHR clinics as of October 20! These clinics may benefit from a refresher on which data fields in CHR flow to Netcare. We also encourage CHR providers to log in to Netcare and review the records of a few patients they have seen since October 20 to ensure that these visits are showing up as expected in the Community Encounter Digest.

Upcoming Webinars of Interest

Providers and team members are invited to register for our December 4 Digital Health Innovation – Session #2 webinar to learn more about new Canadian-made AI tools and reducing admin burden.

Clinic managers are invited to become members of AMA-ACTT's dedicated Network of Practice and attend the November 6 webinar: The Art of Communication: Building Stronger Teams.

Q&A Highlights

Q: How long after correcting attachment errors on a CPAR panel will these changes be reflected on the PCPCM panel sizes on AMA member dashboards?

A: There is generally a delay of 2-3 months between changes made to a CPAR panel and those changes being reflected on the AMA member dashboard panel sizes. However, physicians on PCPCM will receive panel payments for any eligible patients successfully added to the CPAR panel before the monthly EMR to CPAR upload and their PCPCM panel size will no longer be updated on their AMA Member Dashboard. It is important to remember that the PCPCM panel size displayed on AMA member dashboards is not used to calculate PCPCM panel payments. Physicians should look for their monthly statement of account to see their actual PCPCM panel size for which they received payment.

Q: With some EMRs, making the chart confidential due to internal privacy concerns will cause the patient to not be included on the CPAR panel, even when this is not the intention. Is there any workaround for this?

A: It is true that in many EMRs, marking the chart confidential will stop all CII data from flowing, including CPAR panel data. Some attendees shared helpful workarounds, such as password-protecting a chart instead of using the confidentiality setting and only providing the password to authorized users. Other workarounds include only marking certain sections of the chart as confidential instead of the entire chart, and this may retain CPAR panel inclusion. AMA-ACTT has confirmed with eHealth that manually adding these patients to the panel in the CPAR Portal is not sustainable, as the next monthly panel upload will overwrite any manual additions.

Q: If a physician is on PCPCM and practices at more than one location, will their CPAR panels be combined when their panel payments are calculated?

A: You can find this answer directly in the PCPCM FAQ:

"PCPCM BAs will be linked to a single submitter ID. Physicians who practice out of two independent clinics and submit CPAR panels from each will need to manage both panels under a single PCPCM BA and submitter.

Combining separate CPAR panel numbers under one single CPAR Panel number should only be done in situations where PCPCM will be billed from both clinics, for example, when the same EMR and submitter information are used at both locations.

If managing more than one clinic under a single PCPCM BA does not work, consider which clinic has the larger CPAR panel size and attach the PCPCM business arrangement to that clinic. Become an independent submitter, choose which clinic and CPAR panel will be linked to the PCPCM BA, and continue using Fee for Service out of the other clinic."

Next CII/CPAR Connect - November 18

What is CII/CPAR Connect?

CII/CPAR Connect is an AMA-ACTT Community of Practice (CoP) meeting supporting CII/CPAR users and teams with a forum to collaborate and ask questions.

Meetings run monthly, typically on the third Tuesday of the month at 1 p.m. Attend any one session or all.

Click the button below for all dates and to register. You can also view slides from previous sessions.

Questions? Check out the CII/CPAR Resource Centre or email ciicpar@albertadoctors.org.