Practitioner schedules
In British Columbia, outpatient laboratory tests may only be ordered by referring practitioners enrolled under the Medicare Protection Act.
The Laboratory Services Act (LSA) defines a referring practitioner as a person who is either enrolled under the Medicare Protection Act (MPA) or a person within a class of prescribed health care practitioners who may make a request for a beneficiary to receive benefits.
In order for an MSP-enrolled patient to receive laboratory services as a paid benefit, laboratory facility operators must receive the request from authorized referring practitioners prescribed under the Laboratory Services Regulation (regulations).
Under the regulations, referring practitioners with approved benefit schedules include midwives, nurse practitioners, dentists, podiatrists, and certified registered nurses. These referring practitioners must be registrants of their respective regulatory colleges and may only request laboratory tests that are defined within their scopes of practice.
Nurse practitioners and dentists may also order laboratory tests or procedures approved within their respective scope of practice, although they do not have a specific practitioner schedule.
The following practitioner schedules are approved by the Minister of Health and specify the laboratory tests that may be requested by each class of these referring practitioners.
Please direct inquiries to pracbenefitscheds@phsa.ca.
A summary of practitioner schedules-related Ministerial Orders approved under the LSA can be found here:
As of October 1, 2018, PHSA is responsible for processing requests for changes to the practitioner schedules.
To make a request for change, save and complete the following change request form. Attach a separate document if additional rationale is required.
(If the form does not open, right-click the link, select ‘save link as’ or ‘save target as’ and save the file prior to editing. If problems persist, please contact pracbenefitscheds@phsa.ca.)
Please submit the completed form to pracbenefitscheds@phsa.ca.
Please do not submit patient information or personal identifiable information via email.
The
BC Guidelines support health practitioners in delivering high-quality and appropriate care to patients with specific clinical conditions or diseases. This includes laboratory-related guidelines adopted under the LSA by the Minister of Health. A referring practitioner must consider all relevant guidelines and protocols when considering the laboratory services being requested. Find a list of adopted laboratory-related BC guidelines here:
The Guidelines and Protocols Advisory Committee (GPAC) is an advisory committee to the Medical Services Commission that reviews draft BC guidelines that are newly developed or revised prior to publication on the BC Guidelines website. For more information, see
Guidelines & Protocols.
PLMS may initiate changes to the practitioner schedules at the request of the health practitioner college to support the delivery of clinical care within the college’s defined scope of practice, by laboratory service providers or PHSA, to support approved reflex testing or changes in methodology that may impact reimbursement. Colleges may submit requests at any time.
PLMS facilitates a review of the request by the relevant discipline advisory committee and other subject matter experts as required. After the review process, PLMS forwards a recommendation to the Ministry of Health for review and approval by the Minister.
PLMS will forward recommendations to the Ministry of Health and notify the requestor of the decision and effective date.
