Decide that you want to clean up your historical data
a) Why should you do this? What’s Important to YOUR Practice? Some examples are:
- The incentive bonus programs for physicians provide financial rewards for better coded data and may provide some funding for this exercise. (eg Auditing of Medications, preparation of care reports)
- Teams are better able to identify candidates for chronic disease management programs
- Patients with Chronic Diseases can be tracked to ensure they are getting the kind of follow-up they need
- It will be easier for your practice to do QIP reporting and participate in D2D, adding your voice to strengthen your associations ability to advocate for what you need
b) Funding Sources for Hiring a Student i. Estimate how much bonus your physicians are currently foregoing, based on the current data quality, and therefore how much money is likely to be returned with improvements in data quality via the student. See table to be completed by the team for each doctor, as a tool to estimate the potential value of the data cleaning project.
- Assume, or estimate the number of patients based on the prevalence of the various conditions in the practice.
- Assume, or estimate the actual bonus received by each doctor from the average amount received in previous years or by others in the team, if actual amounts not available directly
- Consider that the very high end maximum cost of a summer student is about $20,000, with a more reasonable cost being $12-15,000. See Appendix A for a table on calculating the potential bonus.
Check with your physicians to see how much money they are willing to spend for a student placement, given the above calculations. ii. If necessary, consider how much money your team can afford to pay (vacancy or one-time money that can be spent now and/or accrued to the next year). For example, a 4 month vacancy for any clinician in the previous year would likely generate enough vacancy money to pay for the summer student, assuming the vacancy monies were not already allocated elsewhere. Note: teams may need to request permission from MOHLTC representatives to reallocate vacancy money to this project, but the MOHLTC has assured AFHTO that they would be supportive of such requests. Teams who qualify for ARI may be able to reallocate these resources without specific permission from MOHLTC. Please contact Bryn Hamilton or a/your/the MOHLTC representative for more information about ARI. iii. Regardless of who pays, ensure your physician(s) are supportive of this work. See Appendix B for a sample draft note for physicians to sign. iv. Provincial or Federal Government incentives may provide some funding to assist in hiring a student. Some of these options are dependent on the type of student involved.
- Northern Ontario Internship Program
- Youth Employment Fund
- Canada Summer Jobs
- Employment Ontario — $2 per hour summer incentive
- Co-Operative Education Tax Credit
- Abilities Connect Fund
c) Consider the different types of students potentially available There are numerous programs in the province offering different types of students, each with different funding models and placement duration for the students participating in the placement. Some programs have their students participate in a placement specifically as part of their education and have rules in that they cannot receive wages as part of the placement. Whereas others do require the student to be compensated. Even though you can use students from almost any education institution in the province this toolkit uses the following institutions:
- Health records student placement (CHIMA accredited institutions across Ontario)
- McMaster eHealth Masters student placement
- Any summer student (see government programs for hiring students)