About CAPA
The Canadian Association of Physician Assistants is a nationally incorporated bilingual professional association that advocates on behalf of its members at the direction of a volunteer Board of Directors which represents Physician Assistants (PA) including those serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, PA students, and other members across Canada and internationally. CAPA members share a desire to help develop Canadian health care, and to advocate for the professions’ model of cooperative, collaborative, patient centered quality health care excellence.
Purpose
CAPA staff regularly use research to guide their advocacy and communication efforts. Most notably, staff often refer to the research done by the Conference Board of Canada in 2016. CAPA would like to build on this research to help our advocacy efforts moving forward. Specifically, we would like to investigate the benefits and value of a funding model that allows physicians to explicitly bill for work delegated to a PA.
Research Focus
Working with CAPA, and the information in the CBOC report, the researcher will explore existing funding models, and develop new ones that aim to save the health system money, increase physician input, incent team-based care, and make it easier for physicians to employ PAs in their practice. Given that health care is a provincially regulated sector, the research should take a cross jurisdictional approach, reviewing physician fee schedules in high needs areas and in key provinces, and provide examples and options for CAPA’s use in future advocacy work. The outcome of the research may provide:
- Funding model options that assume a physician can bill for delegated work with recommendations for key provinces that demonstrates the benefit to patients, physicians and PAs.
- Case examples that demonstrate cost savings to the health care system;
- Metrics to show how PAs reduce wait times; and
- Benefits to health care system of implementing this funding model.
The research should also help address these key priorities for CAPA:
- Refine talking points on funding model best practices and create a ‘case study’ one-pager for use by Directors and members (concise and easily understood by physicians and decision makers); and
- Research changes or advances in team-based funding models so that we have current information to share with members and stakeholders.
We would like these facts presented in an easy to read and engaging way. This research may also analyze case studies on PA success stories around Canada to be used as examples. The most fundamental point of the research is to gain information that makes a compelling case for the regulation and support of PAs.
Timelines
CAPA would like this research to begin as soon as possible, with a potential end date of Fall 2022, however the timelines are negotiable.
Budget
CAPA is a non-profit organization with limited resources. $40,000 has been allocated for this project.
Eligibility Criteria
This research may be done by a research firm or an independent researcher. All information must be backed up with legitimate sources.
Next Steps
Please include the following information in your proposal:
- Name and qualification of company and/or researchers;
- Work plan for research, including timeline;
- Budget;
- Research methodology you plan to use; and
- Any additional creative or innovative ideas on how to complete this research.
We request that researchers respond to Marina at mbanister@capa-acam.ca submit your proposal by July 21, 2022.
