FHO+ Is Coming: Track Your Billable Indirect Care Hours

How many hours of clinical work did you give away for free last week? I am talking about the lab reviews at 10 p.m., the referral follow-ups between patients, and the chart updates that keep your panel safe. Starting April 2026, Ontario’s FHO+ compensation model will finally pay physicians for this exact work at $80 per hour.

Here is the part that keeps me up at night. Most doctors I speak with in Hamilton, Burlington, and Oakville have no system for tracking this time. They are already doing the work. They just cannot prove it.

If you cannot prove it, you cannot bill it.

What FHO+ Actually Changes

The OMA confirms that FHO+ represents the future of family medicine in Ontario. For the first time, the model compensates physicians for the full scope of care, including the moments that happen outside the exam room.

Q310 covers direct care at $80 per hour. Q311 covers indirect care, which includes lab reviews, results management, and care coordination, also at $80 per hour. Q312 and Q313 handle telephone care and clinical administration, each with specific rates and rules.

There are caps to understand. Indirect and administrative work combined cannot exceed 25 percent of your monthly eligible payments. Administrative work alone is capped at 5 percent. That is still a meaningful recovery of time you were never paid to perform.

Chart reviews, referral coordination, prescription renewals, and patient callbacks all fall under indirect or administrative care. Most family physicians perform dozens of these tasks daily without a second thought. Under FHO+, each one carries a billable value if you track it properly.

My brother Jason spent 18 years as an Advanced Care Paramedic. He watched clinicians drown in the paperwork that supports patient outcomes. He is the reason OpsMed treats every minute of indirect care as billable infrastructure, not an afterthought.

The Tracking Problem You Cannot Ignore

FHO+ is generous, but Ontario will not hand over money based on memory. You need timestamped, auditable records that connect your activity to specific patients and tasks. A sticky note on your desk does not count.

This is where many practices will stumble. Right now, the average Ontario family physician spends 19 hours per week on administrative tasks. Most of that time evaporates into the day without a log.

Results management is a perfect example. You might spend 45 minutes each morning sorting faxed lab reports and routing them to the correct charts. That is pure indirect care time, and right now it is invisible to your billing system.

Under FHO+, that same time becomes revenue, but only if your documentation can survive scrutiny.

PHIPA, Ontario’s health privacy law, also demands that any record of patient-related activity be handled with strict accountability. If you are tracking time using unsecured apps or offshore tools, you are introducing risk that no audit will forgive. Canadian-hosted data is not optional here. It is required.

How We Built the FHO+ Module

OpsMed is not an AI scribe. We do not sit in the exam room and draft your visit notes. We handle the automation that happens everywhere else, and our FHO+ module was built specifically for Ontario’s new indirect care rules.

Every time you review a lab result inside the system, the platform logs the timestamp and the task. Every referral touch, every coordination call, and every after-hours chart update gets captured automatically.

You stay in complete control because every log enters a review-first queue. Nothing is filed until you confirm it.

When the auditor asks how you spent that hour on Tuesday evening, you will have a clean record showing the patient identifier, task type, and exact duration. All in a format that aligns with OHIP’s expectations.

That last point matters. AI is a powerful tool for organization, but it does not replace clinical judgment. We built the review step because my brother Jason insisted on it. He has seen too many software tools promise magic and deliver headaches.

All data lives on Azure Canada Central in Toronto. My brother Steven’s team at CyberLeda provides the security backstop, which means privacy and breach response are embedded from day one. We do not bolt security on after the fact.

That family connection is not just a nice story. It means your clinic automation and your cybersecurity are managed by brothers who actually talk to each other. There is no vendor finger-pointing when questions come up.

What to Do Before April

You do not need to restructure your practice tomorrow. You need visibility into where your time already goes.

We offer a free Clinic Efficiency Check-Up. It is a 20-minute conversation where we quantify your current admin burden and deliver a one-page visual report. You will see exactly where your FHO+ billable hours are hiding.

For qualifying practices, we also run a free 30-day pilot. You can see the automated time tracking in your own workflow before the April deadline arrives. No upfront commitment, no disruption to your MOAs.

We designed the pilot to run quietly in the background. Your MOA keeps working the way she always has, but the stack of unsorted faxes starts shrinking. The doctor starts seeing organized results instead of a chaotic inbox.

Speaking of MOAs, we are not replacing them. We are removing the manual slog of sorting and logging so they can focus on patient-facing work. Automation should make your team feel supported, not surveilled.

If you are curious how much clinical work you have been doing for free, let us map it out together. Book a Clinic Efficiency Check-Up and we will bring the coffee.

Stay safe, Marc

Most doctors I speak with in Hamilton, Burlington, and Oakville have no system for tracking this time.

Explore our clinic automation services or book a free revenue analysis.