About FAQs

• The annual budget for the Family Practice Renewal Program is $4.5 million. This provides enough funding to establish a good foundation for our program and to get key initiatives up and running.
• It is believed that over time, our work will demonstrate significant contribution to the improvement of primary care in our province, and that the value of our program will be firmly established.

Better work/life balance for family physicians is one of the core goals of the Family Practice Renewal Program.  Some of the strategies to achieve that include:

• Fee codes to compensate physicians for activities that support improved patient care, and which are not currently paid for by MCP.
• Practice education and supports to help physicians better manage administrative workloads and to achieve more efficiencies in your practices.
• Structures, such as FPNs, to help physicians address common practice needs and improve physician workload through things like shared resources to meet local patient population needs; leveraging family physician colleague expertise; working together to purchase supplies for a group of clinics; coordinating locums for a grouping of physicians; and improved recruitment and retention.

The nature and extent of progress in primary care reform during the last decade has been variable across the country. Primary care groups, networks and inter-professional teams have been implemented to varying degrees in most provinces and territories, and an increasing proportion of primary care physicians are participating in blended payment models. It appears that Canada’s primary care performance is better for most aspects of prevention, chronic disease management and coordination of care. Opportunities for major advances include timely access to care (both in-person and by telephone and during both regular office hours and afterhours), patient-centeredness and engagement, communication across healthcare settings, care processes, development of inter-professional teams, use and functionality of electronic medical/health records, systematic feedback on performance, and addressing health and healthcare inequities.

The Department of Health and Community Services and the regional health authorities are rolling out a number of provincial primary health care reform activities in targeted areas of the province. The Family Practice Renewal Program is a key provincial and Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association priority, to facilitate family physician participation and integration with these other primary health care initiatives. The Family Practice Renewal Program is intended to complement these and other projects, while ensuring family physicians have the right mechanisms to participate and integrate with improvements in overall system reform.

Your physician representatives on the Family Practice Renewal Committee (FPRC) are working on your behalf to guide program development.  They are:

• Dr. Wendy Graham, Family Physician, Port aux Basques, Co-Chair
• Dr. Annette McCarthy, Family Physician, Bay Bulls
• Dr. Steve Major, Family Physician, St. John’s

• We have formed a Clinical Advisory Group (CAG) consisting of nine physician members, representative of fee-for-service, salaried, academic, resident, and rural/urban family physicians.
• Their feedback has informed key decisions and has provided valuable input on the practicality of programs and concepts.

We look forward to consulting with them a lot more in 2018.

Members are:

1. Dr. Carmel Casey, Gander
2. Dr. Jared Butler, Grand Falls-Windsor
3. Dr. Jim Bowen, Norris Point
4. Dr. Katherine Stringer, Chair of Family Medicine, Memorial University
5. Dr. Lynette Powell, Grand Falls-Windsor
6. Dr. Mercedes Penton, St. John’s
7. Dr. Shanda Slipp, Corner Brook
8. Dr. Sarah Small, Clarenville
9. Dr. Roxanne Cooper, St. John's

No. One of the program principles is voluntary participation for all programs. However, although you can take advantage of individual program areas, e.g. the Fee Code Program, we would encourage you to participate in local Family Practice Networks, if available in your area, and Practice Improvement initiatives, to support practice management needs you may have.

To indicate interest in any aspect of the Family Practice Renewal Program, please contact one of our program staff.