If you are a physiotherapist in BC and would like to provide services to injured workers you need to complete the RFP (request for proposal) that has been tendered by WSBC.
We’d like to do what we can to help our Jane Community (and all BC physios!) navigate the process in any way we can.
This post will provide some reference material, links and documentation that we hope will be helpful. Everything in orange is clickable and will provide direction to a resource or more information.
What is the RFP?
RFP stands for Request for Proposal, and this is the first renewal of an agreement where BC Physios need to be approved through a proposal process to provide services. If you do not have an approved RFP as a clinic (even a clinic of 1), you can not treat or bill WSBC clients.
The current agreement expires November 1 2017, so if you have not submitted a renewal you will no longer be eligible to bill WSBC for treatment provided. New applications are due September 29 before 2pm.
If you want to see how much you have billed to WSBC recently to decide whether it is worthwhile, you can head to your Settings tab, and run your Summary Report. This report will show how much you’ve invoiced and been paid by WSBC during the time period you report.
I find it interesting to run it for the whole practice and then break it down by running it for each individual practitioner. Often the newer practitioners are the ones seeing the bulk of the WSBC clients.
The other thing I looked at was a rough estimate of price per treatment. The idea behind the WSBC Block Billing system is that when all added up the payment per treatment should be about the same as your private rate. WSBC pays more for an initial assessment and report and for the Discharge and then less for the treatment block in the middle, but when taken a a full course of care my understanding is that this should add up to be similar to the amount you would bill if treating a private patient.
You can do a rough calculation of this by running your Purchases report for WSBC for a certain time period to see the number of invoices created for WSBC (if you are managing your insurance billing the way we detail in our help guide you should have “no charge”invoices for all treatments on which you are not submitting a block”). This report is under you BILLING tab then scroll down and choose WSBC as your insurer.
Then at the bottom of the report you will see the invoice total count. This is roughly the number of WSBC treatments you’ve seen in this time period.
If you take the amount billed to WSBC during the same time frame (from the Billing Summary report mentioned above) and divide it by this visit count you will get your average price per treatment.
When I did this for a clinic recently I came to $61.48 per treatment. Which is 80% of the private fee, and WSBC made up 7% of total clinic billings, although interestingly the newer therapists were responsible for 90% of that.
When deciding whether to renew or apply it could be a good idea to consider how WSBC caseload fits into your clinic as a whole.
What’s new in this agreement over the last agreement?
You can see the full agreement including the fee schedule if you download the RFP from WSBC’s website.
There’s some minor changes to a few of the fees, including a slight bump in fees for the Standard and Post Surgical Extension Block up from $254 to $305 and the First Post-Surgical Treatment Block is up from $432 to $483. Other than that fees remain the same.
There’s also a New Secondary Assessment Report for Standard and Post Surgical Blocks which can be billed when a worker transfers to another provider after starting a claim elsewhere.
The main problem that the new agreement seems to be trying to address is when clients move from one practice to another part way through treatment or when practitioners work at multiple clinics over time (changing clinics or contracting).
The new RFP also covers clinics as a whole, while previously independent therapists needed to apply if they were contractors and not employees.
Where can I apply?
While the posting is found both on the WSBC site, you have to actually apply through Bonfire. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE PAGE. You will need to register for a Bonfire account to send your information in electronically.
What do I need to know?
There’s a fairly detailed list of requirements on the application. I’m going to provide some resources here to try and make this a bit easier, although it will still likely take a few hours to work through the application process.
FIPPA (Appendix C)
There’s an entire section that covers FIPPA and the privacy and security of your patient information.
Question 2.2.2. of Appendix C asks that “All employees and subcontractors are required to sign a confidentiality agreement, including provisions with respect to the protection of privacy.”
We have a generic forms you can modify for your clinic for this confidentiality agreement:
Question 2.2.6 asks that “Personal information, other than personal information required for payment, is stored, accessed, used and disclosed within Canada only.” and 2.2.7 asks that “Email servers and data storage servers, including back-up and disaster recovery servers, are located within Canada.”
Jane stores all Canadian clients data in Canada.
Jane’s data for Canadian clients is stored in secure servers in Eastern Canada which are SOC2 Type 2 compliant. This means they undergo external auditing and reporting protocols to be classified as the most secure tier of data storage. Jane has a private server bank located in a locked facility (complete with the latest security, authorization, and surveillance technologies - including a man trap that locks you in if you don’t pass the retina scan) and all data is backed up regularly on secondary servers in Eastern and Western Canada. When in transit your data is encrypted with 256 bit encryption (the same as your bank would use).
So you can answer “Yes” to both those questions if you are running your practice with Jane.
Question 2.2.8 asks for a Privacy Policy and also a Breach Protocol. I’ve linked here to a Template for a clinic Privacy Statement and also to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC’s Breach Toolkit. It includes a helpful checklist you can download and submit with your application.
I have more questions!
We’re of course happy to help any way we can, or you can contact the official RFP contact with WSBC
Matilda Groom, Procurement Analyst
Purchasing Services
Email: [email protected]