December Messenger 2019

Table of contents

Medical Matters: What’s Up With the New Logo?

Only Three Weeks Left to Complete Your 2020 Renewal

TPP Alberta Prescription Pad Order – December Cut-off Date

Are You Struggling with a Health Condition?

The Effects of Practice Data on Patient Outcomes

Give us the Gift of Your Feedback, Just in Time for the Holidays!

Physicians’ Notes: Two-problem Medicine

Physicians’ Notes: How VR is Giving a New Perspective into Ocular Degenerative Diseases

Only Three Weeks Left to Complete your 2020 Renewal

If you’ve already completed your annual renewal, thank you!

If not, we want to help you avoid this year’s late fees, which are $500 for your practice permit and $200 for your professional corporation (PC) permit.*

All forms and payment are due Dec. 31. If you are paying by cheque, please allow enough time for mail delivery.

Not sure if your 2020 renewal is complete?
Log in to the Physician Portal to see what’s outstanding. You can also email or call us during business hours: Monday – Friday, 8:15 a.m. – 4:15 p.m. MT, at 780-969-4925 (Edmonton and area) or 1-877-629-3787 (toll-free in North America).

Retiring from practice?
If you are retiring or withdrawing from practice before 2020, you still need to complete your Renewal Information Form (RIF). The form will be much shorter, but will provide us with needed contact information.

CPSA holiday office closure

 A friendly reminder we’re closed from noon on Dec. 24, 2019 until Jan. 1, 2020.

If you have technical difficulties and can’t complete your annual renewal during the closure, please call 780-423-4764 or 1-800-320-8624 and leave your full name and a contact number. We’ll contact you as soon as possible after we re-open Jan. 2, 2020. Your practice permit will still be valid and we’ll discuss your renewal at that time.

If your call is urgent, an answering service will direct your message to an on-call team member.

TPP Alberta Prescription Pad Order – December Cut-off Date

To ensure receipt of your TPP Alberta prescription pads before the holiday season, please note the final cut-off date for ordering is Friday, Dec. 13 at 12 p.m. (noon). TPP Alberta prescription pad orders will resume on Jan. 6, 2020.

Prescription pad deliveries

The address for delivery of TPP Alberta secure prescription pads should be for your workplace, not home. Even if you are providing locum services, the address of the clinic in which you will be practising should be provided.

Significant issues exist when no one is available to accept home receipt of TPP Alberta prescription pads. Only under extenuating circumstances should your home address be provided for pad delivery purposes.

We appreciate your ongoing cooperation.

Questions? Email TPP.Info@cpsa.ab.ca.

Are You Struggling with a Health Condition?

Let us help

Like your patients, you can develop a physical or mental health condition, or a substance use disorder that affects your ability to work. If this happens, it is very important to seek help early.

Two confidential programs, CPSA’s Physician Health Monitoring Program (PHMP) and the AMA’s Physician and Family Support Program (PFSP), are available to help physicians manage their personal health issues safely and effectively. With your consent, both programs can also work together to give you more resources when you need them most.

Who should I contact and what can I expect?

Because the two programs are often confused, we want to highlight some of the differences that will help you know who to contact and what to expect:

More information on PHMP and PFSP is available on CPSA and AMA’s websites. We care about your health. Let us help.

The Effects of Practice Data on Patient Outcomes

A look at reducing low-value care for bronchiolitis

As Dr. Jennifer Thull-Freedman, Alberta Children’s Hospital Medical Director of Quality and Safety, shared in November’s Messenger, quality improvement is about “understanding the role of data and measurement in driving improved care and outcomes.”

The collection and utilization of data has become a focal point in the healthcare industry over the last several years-informing everything from individual practices to system-wide initiatives. Alberta’s physicians have been privy to such data through CPSA’s individualized MD Snapshot-Prescribing reports, delivered quarterly to physicians who prescribe opioids and benzodiazepines, and MD Snapshot-Practice Checkup, delivered annually to all physicians.

Based on a similar model, emergency physicians at the Alberta Children’s Hospital recognized an opportunity to use individual practice data to reduce low-value care for bronchiolitis-the leading cause of infant hospitalization in Canada.

“We had good evidence and high-quality practice guidelines, which showed a lot of the traditional things we’d done for these patients did not have a positive impact on their care,” said Dr. Antonia Stang, Section Chief of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.

Led by the Physician Learning Program at the University of Calgary, the project team created individual data reports for pediatric emergency physicians, which focused on their care for patients with bronchiolitis.

“Starting in November of 2017, we provided individual physicians with feedback on their utilization of diagnostic [X-ray and viral] testing and medication [Ventolin and steroids] use, all of which, for most kids with bronchiolitis, is not recommended,” said Dr. Stang. “We encouraged them to compare their practice with that of their peers and then we held a facilitated, multi-disciplinary feedback session.”

The facilitated feedback session allowed the group to share key findings and work collectively to identify strategies for practice improvement.

The results?

“When we did a follow-up feedback session in December of 2018, we found that chest X-rays utilization decreased from 21 to 18 per cent, respiratory viral tests went from 32 to 21 per cent, steroids from 13 to five per cent and the use of Ventolin from 22 to 12 per cent,” shared Dr. Stang. “Those results were impressive and resulted from providing physicians with feedback and having the ability for the care team to get together and discuss.”

Read an overview of Reducing low-value care for bronchiolitis patients.

Give us the Gift of your Feedback, Just in Time for the Holidays!

An Alberta oncologist shares his view on the standards of practice consultation process

The consultation was posted on the website with care, in hopes that much feedback soon would be there.

A new CPSA Standards of Practice consultation is upon us. The passing of last year’s Bill 21: An Act to Protect Patients included changes to the requirements for reporting sexual abuse and misconduct. This means CPSA needed to take a look at our standards of practice on reporting overall, to ensure they remain consistent with current legislation.

As a profession-led regulator, CPSA strongly believes the standards we expect from Alberta’s physicians should reflect the realities of front-line practice. This is why your feedback plays such an important role in the process.

Your feedback makes a difference

Dr. Malcolm Brigden, a medical oncologist from Lethbridge, often takes part in CPSA’s consultations and encourages his colleagues to do the same.

“I participate in the consultation process virtually every time,” says Dr. Brigden. “Anytime I have worked with CPSA, my contribution has always been acknowledged, and it has been exceptionally gratifying to actually see some of my input, or even some of the actual textual changes I suggested, appear in the final standards.”

Have your say by Jan. 16

We currently have three standards of practice on reporting and recommend condensing them into two. A pre-consultation on these standards was done in the spring and that feedback has been captured in the proposed drafts. Visit our website to review our existing standards, the suggested amendments, and to provide your feedback. It’s the best gift you could give us this holiday season.

Minor update to the Referral Consultation Advice to the Profession document

We have added a note that sending a typed referral-as opposed to a handwritten one-is best practice where clarity is concerned, based on feedback received from a consultant. You’ll see this addition on page four under “Content.”

Questions? Contact Chantelle Dick, CPSA Standards of Practice Coordinator, at chantelle.dick@cpsa.ab.ca.