Happy Canada Day! Effective today, July 1st, BC's Specialist Services Committee (SSC) has rolled out new changes to the SSC fee guide. These updates were approved on February 16th, 2017. They are as follows:
SSC Fee Guide Changes – July 1st 2017
- Restrict advice fees if patient was previously seen for the same condition in previous 180 days ( 10001) and 30 days ( 10002 and 10005) as the primary purpose of these fees is to provide advice on patients that you have not seen.
- Require physicians who are billing advice fees to include practitioner number of the individual seeking advice for both physicians and/or allied care providers (10001, 10002 and 10005).
- Reduce 10004 (Multidisciplinary Conferencing fee) to value of lowest equivalent conferencing fee (approx. $46.23).
- Require a minimum of 15 minutes per patient to bill 10004 and make minor billing rule edits to clarify that the fee is intended to be used for extraordinary cases rather than for routine care.
- As there are currently no up to date resources on Group Medical Visits, the SSC would like to engage more broadly with specialists using Group Medical Visits to better understand how the fee notes can better reflect the key requirements.
- Request the Patterns of Practice Committee review individual cases in which billings are disproportionately high, to find out more information and to better educate about the intent and appropriate use of the SSC fees as necessary.
- The SSC will explore re-organizing the fee guide to make it more user-friendly.
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