PSP

The Practice Support Program (PSP) is launching a new service offering focused on supporting family physicians through the phases of panel management in a group setting. These sessions will be specific to your EMR platform and teach the essentials needed to:

• Improve patient care and workflow efficiency through improve EMR processes,
• Identify resource needs to help family doctors care for their patients, and
• Inform and plan proactive and preventative care.

Sessions will offer EMR demos, opportunities for group discussion, and will pair you up with a PSP Practice Improvement Coach for one-on-one support. For family doctors on the Longitudinal Family Practice Payment model, panel management will help you maintain your panel in the Provincial Attachment System and help you to provide proactive and preventative care for your patients. Panel Management can also help your team provide team-based care and help you incorporate a nurse into your team.

At this time, PSP is offering the Panel Management series for TELUS Med Access. Upcoming sessions will cover Oscar, Intrahealth Profile, and MOIS. If you are seeking support on an EMR other than Med Access please contact us through the service request form for one-to-one panel management support.

What is Panel Management?

Panel management is a process of proactively managing a defined population of patients, using EMR (electronic medical record) data to identify and respond to patients’ chronic and preventative care needs. The concept is simple: better information about patients leads to better care for patients.

The phases of panel management are a framework designed to support providers and team members in providing longitudinal, proactive care to patients. An accurate panel means physicians can easily track billings, improve workflows, improve communications with patients, and maintain a better work-life balance.

For more information on Panel Management and the Practice Support Program visit www.pspbc.ca.

Course cost: Free. The costs of this course are covered by the FPSC.

Course overview and benefits:

During this 12-week course, medical office staff will learn panel management skills that will enhance their clinic’s panel management process and workflows. Participants will learn:

• The basic abilities of a panel manager
• The basics of the patient medical home and primary care networks
• How to assign patients to a specific primary care provider
• The principles of registry-based care
• Proactive and preventative care through quality improvement

The course includes a capstone AIM statement, which is supported by an FPSC Practice Improvement Coach and a Panel Management Coach.

Course dates:

The course runs two virtual cohorts per year. 

• Thursday, January 29, 2026, to Thursday, April 16, 2026 (6:30 –8:30 p.m.)
• September 2026 cohort TBC

Course eligibility:

• You are a medical office assistant or office manager
• You currently work in a clinic
• Your clinic provides longitudinal care to patients
• The clinic you work at must be on an EMR
• You have a clinic physician’s approval to participate  

How to register

Complete the Panel Management Course with the University of the Fraser Valley Registration Form here. Registration for the January 2026 cohort has now closed.

Course outline

Week 1: Module 1- Orientation

Week 2: Module 2 - PCN/PMH/Intro to panel & empanelment, Module 1 Assignment Due

Week 3: EMR Session

Week 4: Module 2 Assignment Due

Week 5: Module 3 – Disease Registries

Week 6: EMR Session

Week 7: Module 3 Assignment Due

Week 8: Module 4 -Proactive Care

Week 9: EMR Session

Week 10: Optional Office Hours

Week 11: Module 4 Assignment Due

Week 12: Capstone AIM Statement

Week 13: Capstone Presentation

Quality improvement to optimize your practice

With your practice team’s specific needs and goals in mind, our practice improvement coaches are available to help clarify roles, establish structures, and make lasting improvements in areas like health technology, panel management, and team-based care. In addition to our team of skilled coaches, peer mentors bring clinical expertise and their direct experience to the support we provide. Physician and medical office assistant (MOA) peer mentors work with our coaches to provide one-to-one support directly in doctors' practices and co-facilitate learning opportunities.

If you’re thinking about ways to optimize your practice, our practice support team can help you get started. We use a quality improvement (QI) approach that’s flexible and tailored to your practice. We focus on:

1. Setting goals
2. Implementing changes
3. Measuring results
4. Assessing for improvement
5. Sustaining successful practice change

Develop high performing primary care teams: Team-based care

Within our team, coaches with a specialized skill set and focus on team-based care (TBC) work with peers across the province to provide additional supports in the areas of leadership, conflict resolution, role clarity, communication, and team development. Coaches can also help primary care networks (PCNs) plan for team-based care and the impacts on physicians and teams in their community.

Designed for primary care teams in the process of implementing or already working in a team-based care environment, our team-based care learning series offers teams an opportunity to come together with our coaching support as you work toward becoming a high functioning team. Session order is flexible and designed to meet the needs of teams as you work to implement team-based care.

Click here to read about more team-based care supports.

Understand your patients' care experience: The patient experience tool

Use our patient experience tool to survey patients about their experiences and interactions with your family practice on topics such as wait times, office hours, coordination of care, and cultural sensitivity. Clinics can send the survey to patients electronically (email or SMS), or ask patients to complete it on tablets provided by FPSC's practice support program. Tablets typically rotate between participating clinics every six to eight months but can be available for longer periods for practices who choose to continuously survey their patients.

Practice team members access responses in real-time using an easy-to-use, web-based dashboard. Patient responses are anonymous, and are available only when a minimum of five responses per question are received. The secure platform automatically anonymizes and randomizes the responses upon receipt before the data is reported in the dashboard.

Data from the patient experience tool can inform your practice’s quality improvement activities. Our practice improvement coaches help physicians and teams to begin surveying patients, reviewing survey data, and implementing practice improvements. Physicians can use the data to inform quality improvement activities in practice. Practices can opt to share aggregated data with their local division. 

The patient voice can contribute to a family practice’s work to adopt the attributes of a patient medical home and to determine readiness to participate in a primary care network.

To get started, complete this online form. A PSP team member will connect with you to coordinate a time to deliver and set up the tablet and survey.

Learning opportunities in practice management topics

To help doctors and practice teams stay up-to-date on information and best practices in key areas of practice management, we offer a variety of flexible, evidence-based, learning opportunities. Our practice improvement coaches support doctors and teams to apply learnings and put theory to practice, paving the way for positive, sustainable change.

Learning opportunities are:

• Short, flexible, and tailored to a practice’s immediate learning needs
• Interactive to help physicians maximize the value of their learning time
• Multi-modal (virtual or in-person sessions) to work with physician schedules and learning preferences
• Focused on themes of patient self-management, quality improvement, and team-based care

Practice management topics include:

• Advanced Access & Office Efficiency
• Practice improvement (quality improvement (QI))
• Team-based care 
• Panel management
• Health technology (EMR, virtual care)
• Group medical visits

Mentoring from your peers

Physician and medical office assistant (MOA) peer mentors work with our coaches to provide one-to-one support directly in your practice and co-facilitate learning opportunities, lending their experience and unique perspective to the support we provide. Whether you already know what kind of support you are looking for or want to learn more about how your practice might benefit, our team can help you.

If you're interested in connecting with a peer mentor to support your practice, please submit a service request here.

If you're interested in getting involved as a peer mentor, we would love to hear from you. Please reach out to peermentors@doctorsofbc.ca to get involved.

As leaders and experts in their fields, Peer Mentors can further develop leadership, coaching, and facilitation skills through their participation in our Peer Mentor Network. If you're interested in getting involved as a peer mentor, we would love to hear from you. Please reach out to peermentors@doctorsofbc.ca to learn more.

In partnership with the Doctors Technology Office, we offer a range of EMR services that help physicians and practice teams use their EMRs (electronic medical records) more effectively for both foundational and quality improvement activities. Our team offers expertise across various EMRs, leveraging skills from physician and medical office assistant (MOA) peer mentors to provide the support you need to help the benefits of health technology.

Use your EMR more effectively

Individual coaching and mentoring support

Connect with one of our skilled coaches, a physician, or MOA peer mentor with expertise in your EMR or virtual care platform for support specific to your individual needs. We can help you find resources, get connected with the Doctors Technology Office, or get involved in a group learning session with your peers.

Group sessions

We offer tailored group learning opportunities to enable doctors and MOAs who use the same EMR or health technology platform to come together to work toward improving their proficiency. Sessions may focus on EMR workflow, access and efficiency, panel management, and practice improvement activities. To get involved, contact us at psp@doctorsofbc.ca, or submit a service request here.  

Read more: Optimize your practice

Find health technology resources

We work in partnership with the Doctors Technology Office to support physicians in implementing and enhancing their use of health technology platforms, like EMR and other integrated care programs, that improve workflow and efficiency while preserving quality, equity, privacy, and cultural safety.

Clinical and practice management tools

Our team can help you access and use tools embedded in your EMR to improve clinical documentation and simplify practice workflows. We can help doctors and their teams use tools within their EMR to apply learnings from clinical educational sessions and to identify and care for patients with underdiagnosed chronic conditions by:

• Linking to patient registries to simplify scheduling of recall appointments and periodic testing.

• Completing patient questionnaires directly in EMRs.

• Accessing patient handouts.

To support doctors in the phases of panel management and other clinical quality improvement activities that PSP supports, our team has worked with many EMRs across the province to embed resources directly into EMRs. The Doctors Technology Office offers resources and guides to EMRs and EMR data migrations.

Our team can also help you get connected with other health technology initiatives around the province such as Pathways, the Health Data Coalition, and Up-to-Date. Let us know if you're interested.

Use virtual care tools in your practice

Our team can help community-based primary care teams:

• Deliver virtual care in a way that emphasizes the patient-doctor relationship.

• Support optimal patient care through the adoption of full-spectrum virtual care, alongside in-person appointments.

• Identify opportunities to integrate virtual care into your practice workflow in a way that is both sustainable and effective.

Resources

• Supports and resources for providing virtual care