Lesson One, Getting Started: This lesson provides an outline of the professionals you will need to engage to open your practice, what to expect, their roles, and how to select your professional team physicians.

Lesson Two, Financial Planning: This lesson focuses on providing the basic information about creating a financial plan,managing debt, saving and investments and negotiating with banks.

Lesson Three, Personal and Professional Insurance: This lesson focuses on describing your personal insurance needs such as disability, life insurance, liability and house insurance. It also outlines the professional insurance that you require to run your practice including practice overhead insurance and group insurance.

Lesson Four, Personal and Professional Accounting and Taxation: This lesson is divided in two sections. The first section is designed to help you understand the most important concepts in accounting and how they relate to your practice. The second section provides an overview of how the taxation system works and it highlights potential tax deductions and credits.

Lesson Five, Legal Issues for Physicians: This lesson summarizes some of the scenarios where you may require legal counsel and advice on how to find a good lawyer.

Lesson Six, Starting a Practice: This lesson focuses on the operational aspects required to open a practice including scheduling appointments, patient information, phone procedures, pre-opening checklist and sample operational budgets.

Lesson Seven, Hiring Staff: This lesson provides all the necessary information to hire office staff. It includes job descriptions, interview questions, sample contracts and candidate evaluation forms.

Lesson Eight, Managing Staff: This lesson outlines the basic human resources concepts necessary to manage staff.

Lesson Nine, The Provincial EMR: This lessons outlines the advantages of the provincial EMR program and the services that it currently offers.

Hiring a Practice Nurse: Highlights the benefits of including a nurse in your practice, the considerations that you must take into account when hiring a nurse and the potential complications that you may encounter.

The New Brunswick Medical Society would like to thank Doctors Nova Scotia for their significant contribution in the creation of these practice management lessons. The New Brunswick Medical Society would also like to thank the Canadian Medical Association and MD Financial Management for their assistance and content contributions.

Physicians in New Brunswick are paid either through salary (25%) or through a fee-for-service model (75%). The New Brunswick Medical Society works with the provincial government and WorkSafeNB to set the fee schedules, benefits, reimbursement programs, incentives, and physician remuneration for both fee-for-service and salaried physicians. Fees, programs, and incentives for fee-for-service physicians are developed through a formal negotiation process that culminates in the Master Service Agreement.

Fee-for-service physicians are responsible for filing their billings to Medicare (including sessional and Alternate Funding Plan (AFP) funded physicians) and are expected to know how to correctly bill for their services. This toolkit includes some information on billing practices and the guide for uninsured services (those services that are not covered by Medicare). In addition to this toolkit, the NBMS will be hosting billing workshops at different sites.

• Physician’s Guide to Direct Billing
• Most Common Billing Codes

This toolkit includes NBMS service guides which highlight all the services available to you, including: paternity leave, continuing medical education program and Compensation for Medical Liability Protection Costs.

•  New Physician’s Guide
• Medical Student and Resident Orientation Guide