The Primary Care Physician Compensation Model (PCPCM), also known as Physician Comprehensive Care Model (PCCM), combines Alberta's default fee-for-service funding, clinical Alternative Relationship Plan (ARP) time payments, and capitation based on panel and patient complexity.
If you are registered for the PCPCM, using the CHR you can bill for:
Encounter-based payments
Time-based payments
Clinical administration payments
Patient panel payments, for example a CPAR panel
You must first log into the AMA Member Dashboard to verify your eligibility, express interest, and register to bill services. Once enrolment is complete, Alberta Health provides a new PCPCM Business Arrangement (BA) number. For more information, refer to the Alberta Medical Association’s website.
Providers can bill either under their Business Arrangement for Fee-For-Service (FFS BA) or PCPCM BA. You can choose a default BA number to avoid selecting it each time you bill.
To enable PCPCM billing in the CHR, email the CARE team at care.emraccounts@telus.com. Include the provider's full name, billing number, PCPCM BA number, and your preferred default BA number (FFS BA number or PCPCM BA number). The default BA number auto-populates on new bills.
To bill for PCPCM, you create the provincial bill as usual and ensure your PCPCM BA number is selected. Refer to Creating provincial bills (Alberta).
💡 Tip: Your default BA number auto-populates. To set your default BA number go to Settings > Billing and click the pencil icon beside your Alberta HLink integration. Then select your preferred BA type in the Default BA Number list.
Because ministry bills can only be created for individual patients, when you bill time-based service codes, you use a fake patient with the health card number 10814-7612. Refer to Creating patients.
💡 Tip: You can use any name, birthdate and gender.
Time-based codes must have either the Start Time and Finish Time or Time Spent (Minutes) field and use one of these fee codes:
PC001 - Business hours direct patient care
PC002 - Indirect patient care
PC003 - After hours weekday direct patient care
PC004 - After hours weekend/statutory holiday direct patient care
Updated March 28, 2025