CII/CPAR: Acceleration Grant Fund FAQs

Increasing the adoption of CII/CPAR is a primary focus of the Alberta Medical Association and Alberta Health. To support this work, a $12 million grant was included in the 2022 Alberta Medical Association and Alberta Health physician agreement.

  • The CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant fund provides compensation to physicians for their time and the administrative requirements to enrol and participate in CII/CPAR.
  • The grant is entirely funded by Alberta Health.
  • The $12 million is available on a first come, first served basis until the funding limit is reached.
  • Alberta Health and Alberta Medical Association are working together to coordinate the payments. Physicians do not need to apply or request payment.

Eligibility

Who is eligible for the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funds? New and existing physicians who are live on CII/CPAR are eligible for CII/CPAR Acceleration grant funds if they meet all of the following criteria:

1. They are family physicians, general practitioners, or non-family medicine specialists.
2. If they have a practice:

  • In the community with a conformed EMR (including a Primary Care Network clinic); OR
  • In an AHS-operated primary care clinic (E.g., Family Care Clinics, Family Medicine Clinics)

3. Must be on a fully conformed EMR vendor system.

    • Accuro
    • Ava (once they receive certification in the next few months)
    • CHR
    • Healthquest
    • Med Access
    • PS Suite
    • Wolf, and
    • AHS Connect Care (only for AHS-operated primary care clinics) 
Are locums eligible for CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funding? Yes, all physicians, including locums, that are live and active on CII/CPAR are eligible to receive the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funding if they meet the criteria. (For criteria, see the answer to the question above.)
Are nurse practitioners eligible for CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funding? No, nurse practitioners are not eligible for the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funding because they are not part of the Alberta Medical Association agreement with Alberta Health. Only physicians are eligible for the CII/CPAR Acceleration grant funding.
Are physicians with non-family medicine specialty practices eligible to sign up for CII/CPAR and receive the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant fund payments? Family and non-family medicine physicians are eligible to register for CII/CPAR and are, therefore, eligible for CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant payments. If you provide consult reports back to a referring provider, then you can upload those consults to Netcare and participate in CII/CPAR.
Can a physician still qualify for the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funding if they went live on CII/CPAR, but then took a break in participating in it? Any eligible physician that has been live on CII/CPAR in the last 12 months will be eligible for the initial enrolment payment of $1000. In cases where there have been breaks in CII/CPAR participation (e.g., due to moving clinics or changing EMRs), physicians will be eligible for the second payment (for data submission) once they have submitted a total of at least three months of data to CII/CPAR. This does not need to be three months of continuous data submission.
Will physicians who were live on CII/CPAR prior to the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funding announcement receive funding? Yes, the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funding is for any physicians participating in CII/CPAR. New CII/CPAR enrolments and physicians who are already live on CII/CPAR are all eligible.
Can physicians, who recently went live on CII/CPAR, retroactively upload consult reports from the last three months to Netcare to qualify for funds sooner? No, consult reports cannot be retroactively uploaded to Alberta Netcare. To qualify for the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funding, new consult reports will need to be uploaded via CII/CPAR for at least three months after the physician went live on CII/CPAR.
If a physician is retiring in the next three months, but they are currently live on CII/CPAR and sending consult reports, does the physician still qualify for the funding? Yes. Alberta Health will review the past 12 months of CII/CPAR data and inform the AMA of which physicians are eligible for grant funding. To qualify for funding, physicians must have an active practice and be live on CII/CPAR at the time the payments are determined.

Payment of Acceleration Grant funds

Who distributes the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funds to eligible physicians? Alberta Medical Association is responsible for distributing the payments and Alberta Health will track which physicians are eligible for the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant fund payments.
How will payments be made to eligible physicians? All payments will be made directly to eligible physicians through the Alberta Medical Association (AMA). The default payment method is by cheque, but eligible physicians (who are AMA members) can opt to change the payment to Electronic Funds Transfer by logging into their AMA account and making the change to payment method in their dashboard.
If physicians are paid through a clinic, will the payments be paid to that clinic? All payments will be made directly to eligible physicians through the Alberta Medical Association. No payments will be made to clinics or PCNs, etc.
Is it only the primary custodian (custodian representative) that receives the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant payments? Each registered physician for CII/CPAR is eligible to receive the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant payments, not just the custodian representative.
If I am a physician but not a member of Alberta Medical Association, am I still eligible for this grant? And, if so, how will I receive payment? Physicians who are not members of Alberta Medical Association (AMA) can receive the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant payments. AMA will contact non-member physicians to coordinate payments. All physicians must meet the eligibility criteria (see first question in FAQ for list of eligibility criteria). Physicians who are not currently AMA members may want to consider the benefits of membership.
Will eligible physicians receive any notifications that their CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant payments have been sent to them? How will they be notified? There will likely not be notifications of payment. The default payment method is by mailed cheque, but if physicians who are AMA members want to change the payment method to an Electronic Funds Transfer, then they will be able to log into their AMA account and make that change on their dashboard. AMA will contact non-member physicians to confirm payment details.
If physicians have been live on CII/CPAR for more than three months, will they receive both of the payments they are eligible for at once (enrolment and data submission)? That is the intent, but data submission payments may be delayed due to additional verification requirements.
Do physicians need to apply for the payments they are eligible for? No, physicians do not take any action to receive the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funds they are eligible for. Alberta Health and Alberta Medical Association are working together to coordinate the payments. Physicians do not need to apply or request payment.
Is this a one-time payment? Or do eligible physicians receive a payment every three months they participate in CII/CPAR? Eligible physicians will receive the payments they qualify for only one time.
Does "first come, first served" mean that there will be eligible physicians who will not get payments? The CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant funding is only available for two years and the grant will not be able to compensate all physicians to participate in CII/CPAR. Physicians are encouraged to enroll now to ensure their eligibility.
When can physicians expect to receive their CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant payments? Eligible physicians will begin to receive their CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant payments in summer 2023.

Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

If a clinic is already live on one EMR, and migrating to another EMR (both approved EMRs for the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant), is there a disruption to receiving the grant payments? Hopefully not. Clinics just need three months of data submission in the previous 12 months. The data submission does not need to be consecutive and there can be gaps between the months.
Is there an option for a manual upload if a physician does not have a CII/CPAR compatible EMR? No, not at this time. Only physicians on a fully conformed EMR are eligible for this grant, which includes the following systems: Accuro; Healthquest; CHR; Med Access; PS Suite; Wolf; Ava (once they are conformed); AHS Connect Care (AHS-operated primary care clinics).
I submit panels manually on Ava - does this meet the criteria for going live and CPAR panel submission? And is Ava capable of sending encounters? No, Ava manual panel submissions do not meet the requirement at this time; however, Ava should be fully conformed in the coming months. Once that happens, Ava will be able to send encounter and panel data automatically, making those physicians eligible for the grant payments. Manual panel submission does not count towards the three-month data submission criteria.
When can we expect to see a CHR EMR guidebook for CII/CPAR, specific to fields that go to CED? We are working on this with Telus and Alberta Health. There is currently not a precise timeline, but the CED mapping document is a top priority.
Encounters were not previously uploading for PS Suite. Will this affect funding? Encounters should be fixed in PS Suite in the next few weeks. We recognize that this technical issue is not the fault of physicians or clinics, so this will not affect the panel and encounter payment. 
How does an EMR become "conformed" for CII/CPAR? I don't see our EMR provider name on the list yet. The EMR vendor works with Alberta Health to go through a process to ensure safe and reliable data transfer between the EMR and Alberta Netcare. Interested vendors can contact eHealthProviderSupport@gov.ab.ca. A new "sandbox" development environment has been implemented by Alberta Health to accelerate integration of new EMRs. (See technical definition for sandbox.)

Privacy

If I sign up for CII/CPAR, can I still choose to prevent certain information from going to Netcare from my EMR? Yes. Each EMR offers several methods to prevent sensitive or confidential information from being sent to Netcare through CII/CPAR. This includes the ability to prevent all information from an entire chart from being shared, or select information from a specific visit. EMR-specific information is available in the CII/CPAR course on the Learn@AMA platform, and in our CII/CPAR Resources Centre. A patient may request masking of all or specific health information. So knowing how to keep information from flowing to Netcare via CII/CPAR is important.
Are physicians required to ask for a patient's consent before submitting patient information to Netcare? The Health Information Act requires providers to have the information from a Health Collection Notice available to patients and it can be in the form of poster, clinic TV screen, website, patient registration form, etc. Providers are not required to have direct conversations with patients about CII/CPAR. Learn more about clinic and patient privacy.
Can patients request that their information be withheld or at least “masked”? Patients have the right to request their information be masked in Netcare. More information about Alberta Netcare Masking can be found on the Alberta Netcare Learning Centre dedicated webpage.
If our Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) is up to date, do we need to amend it to participate in CII/CPAR? No. If a clinic’s PIA is current, then no changes are required. There is a CII/CPAR endorsement letter that is part of the enrolment process and serves as an amendment to a clinic's PIA.
Do clinics need to update their Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for CII/CPAR when physicians leave or join the practice? If you have a departing physician, there is a form that needs to be completed to remove them from CII/CPAR. No PIA changes are needed when adding a new provider to CII/CPAR in your clinic, but a revised CII/CPAR endorsement letter is required with a carbon copy going to OIPC and eHealth. There are courses on Learn@AMA that address both of these situations: CII/CPAR: Onboarding (primary care) curriculum in the Privacy Considerations for Participating in CII/CPAR course; and CII/CPAR: Go-Live and Beyond (primary care) curriculum in the Provider Absences and Departures course.

Panel

If a patient does not want to be a part of our CII/CPAR panel, how do we do accommodate it? This depends on which EMR you are using. Some EMRs allow you to remove individual patients from your panel, while others require you to change the patient's status to an inactive status type. Customized information for each EMR is in the CII/CPAR Resources Centre.
What is the difference between panel, encounter, and consult data from CII/CPAR? Panel data is the identification of who is the patient's primary care provider in Netcare, which is populated by the CPAR panel list that is automatically uploaded by your EMR via CII/CPAR.

Encounter data are the key data elements from a patient’s visit, including provider's name, health concerns (problems/profile items), possible allergies, vitals, immunizations, and referral requests. Encounter data flows into the Community Encounter Digest (CED) in Netcare and is a rolling snapshot of the care a patient has received in the past 12 months.

A consult report is a copy of the consult that was sent to the referring provider and it becomes accessible to all providers in the patient’s circle of care through Netcare.
How do you submit a panel to CII/CPAR? Once live on CII/CPAR, panels upload automatically to CII/CPAR on a monthly basis from the conformed EMR. The patients included on the panel are based on the EMR settings which can be customized.

Consult Letter

Can I select which consult reports are uploaded to Netcare? Each conformed EMR gives physicians who are live on CII/CPAR the ability to select which consult reports are uploaded to Netcare. See the Resources Centre to learn more.

Connect Care

For primary care clinics using Connect Care that want to submit a panel, how do they get panel ready? Who can help them submit a confirmation of participation form? The AHS CPAR team will assist primary care clinics with getting panel ready and submitting the confirmation of participation form.
If a physician has signed up for CII/CPAR for their community clinic, but they also work at an AHS site, do they need to sign up for CII/CPAR through AHS so they can upload consult reports? Connect Care has its own method of sending consult reports to Netcare, so the physician will not need CII/CPAR to upload their consult reports if that location is on Connect Care. If the physician is a family doctor (who carries a panel) and the AHS site they work at is an AHS-operated primary care clinic, then they may be eligible to sign up for CII/CPAR in order to upload panel data (but consults would still flow directly from Connect Care).

General CII/CPAR Questions

Who can participate in CII/CPAR? Family physicians, non-family medicine specialists, nurse practitioners, locums, and some allied health professionals can participate in CII/CPAR. Please note, only physicians (including eligible locums) are eligible for the CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant payments.
How do we onboard a new physician to CII/CPAR? Enrollment in CII/CPAR starts with a confirmation of participation form. There are different forms for family medicine and non-family medicine. The onboarding process is also different, so it is best to follow the instructions provided by eHealth in their emails to the CII/CPAR Site Liaison.
How does a non-family medicine specialist sign-up for CII/CPAR? Complete the Expression of Interest Form and an AMA ACTT team member will contact them to guide them through the enrolment process, in partnership with the eHealth team.
What percentage of physicians are currently signed up for CII/CPAR in Alberta? A CII/CPAR infographic, which is updated monthly, shows the provincial uptake of CII/CPAR by eligible physicians.
What are the benefits of CII/CPAR? The benefits of CII/CPAR are: it improves continuity of care; consult reports are available beyond the referring physician; other providers can follow the recommended plan of care; it enables timely access to important patient healthcare information; healthcare providers across the system can see the patient's primary provider(s) in Netcare; and it enables healthcare information to be shared between a patient’s family doctor and other providers they see. Learn more. 

Related Articles

CII/CPAR Acceleration
Alberta Medical Association and Alberta Health Agreement
AMA President's Letter: Funds offered through CII/CPAR Acceleration Grant now available