Where our billing data comes from

Every payment figure on BCPhysicians.com is sourced from official government records. Here is exactly how we determine the amounts shown on physician profiles.

MSP Billing Data (Medical Services Plan)

The primary financial data displayed on physician profiles comes from the MSP Financial Statements, commonly known as “The Blue Book.” This report is published annually by the British Columbia Ministry of Health and lists gross payments made to individual medical practitioners, diagnostic facilities, and other service providers under the Medical Services Plan.

The Blue Book is a public document released under the province’s commitment to healthcare spending transparency. We extract physician-level payment data from each annual edition and match it to the corresponding practitioner in our directory using the physician’s name, specialty, and practice location.

Health Authority Contract Payments

Some physicians receive payments from British Columbia’s regional health authorities in addition to their MSP billings. These payments are typically for hospital-based contracts, on-call stipends, academic positions, and other service arrangements that fall outside the fee-for-service MSP model.

Health authority payment data is sourced from the Schedule of Payments Made to Suppliers reports published annually by each of BC’s regional health authorities: Vancouver Coastal Health, Fraser Health, Interior Health, Island Health, Northern Health, and Providence Health Care. These reports are released as part of each authority’s financial accountability obligations and list payments made to individual vendors and service providers, including physicians.

We cross-reference physician names, specialties, and practice locations from these reports against our directory to link health authority payments to the correct profile. Where a physician appears in multiple health authority reports, the amounts are combined.

Important: these figures are not personal income

In addition, certain billing structures mean that payments attributed to one physician may actually be distributed among multiple practitioners. Group billing numbers, locum arrangements, and shared clinic practices can all result in a single physician’s name appearing in the Blue Book for payments that were earned collectively.

How we keep data current

We update our billing data each time the BC Ministry of Health publishes a new edition of the MSP Financial Statements, typically once per year. Health authority payment data is updated on a similar annual cycle as each authority releases its supplier payment reports. When new data becomes available, we process and integrate it into our directory within a few weeks of publication.

Physician registration status, practice details, and contact information is aligned with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia (CPSBC) physician directory and refreshed on a regular basis.

Accuracy and limitations

We take care to accurately match payment records to the correct physician profiles in our directory. However, name variations, practice relocations, and changes in billing arrangements between fiscal years can occasionally make precise matching difficult. If you believe information on your profile is inaccurate, please contact us and we will review and correct it promptly.

BCPhysicians.com is an independent directory and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the Government of British Columbia, the BC Ministry of Health, any regional health authority, or the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.

Last updated: March 2026

About the surgical wait time data

BCPhysicians.com displays publicly available surgical wait time data on eligible surgeon profiles. This section explains where the data comes from, how we match it, and the limitations you should keep in mind.

What is displayed

For surgeons with publicly available data, we show two key metrics for each surgical procedure they perform:

Median wait time (50th percentile) — Half of all patients who had surgery during the reporting period waited less than this amount of time, and half waited longer. This is measured from the date the health authority received the surgical booking form to the date the patient had surgery.

90th percentile wait time — 90% of patients had surgery within this time frame. This gives a sense of the longest waits most patients experience.

Where available, we also show the number of cases currently waiting and the number of surgeries completed during the reporting period. For patient confidentiality, values under five are suppressed by the source and shown as “fewer than 5 cases.”

Comparison benchmarks

To help put individual surgeon wait times in context, we show comparison benchmarks at three levels for the same procedure and reporting period:

Provincial (British Columbia) — The median wait time across all surgeons and all facilities in the province.

Health authority — The median wait time within the surgeon’s regional health authority (e.g., Fraser Health, Vancouver Coastal Health).

Hospital / facility — The median wait time at the specific hospital where the surgeon operates.

These benchmarks are not rankings. A surgeon with a longer wait time is not necessarily a less skilled clinician. Many factors influence wait times, including case complexity, surgical urgency, patient choice, hospital capacity, and operating room availability.

Data sources

How we match data to surgeon profiles

The BC Surgical Wait Times portal publishes data by surgeon name, procedure, and facility. We match this data to BCPhysicians.com profiles using the surgeon’s name, medical specialty, and hospital affiliation. Each match is scored for confidence, and only high-confidence matches are displayed publicly. Ambiguous or low-confidence matches are reviewed manually before publication.

In some cases, a surgeon may appear on the BC portal under a slightly different name or at a facility not yet recorded in our directory. These situations are flagged for manual review and may result in a temporary delay before wait time data appears on the surgeon’s profile.

Important limitations

Data is historical and lagging. Wait times reflect surgeries completed during the most recent reporting period, which may be several months old by the time it appears on this site. Current conditions at any facility may differ from what is shown.

Not all surgeons have data. The BC portal covers elective surgical procedures only. Surgeons who primarily perform unscheduled or emergency procedures, or who have very low elective case volumes, may not appear in the data.

Suppressed values. For patient confidentiality, the BC Ministry of Health suppresses all values where fewer than five cases are involved. This means that some procedure categories for a given surgeon may show no wait time data even though the surgeon does perform that procedure.

Wait time measures one part of the journey. The “Wait for Surgery” metric measures the time from when the health authority receives the surgeon’s booking form to the date of surgery. It does not include the time spent waiting for an initial consultation with the surgeon, which can also be significant. Consult wait time data is not currently available at the individual surgeon level from BC public sources.

How we keep data current

We refresh surgeon-level wait time data from the BC Surgical Wait Times portal on a biweekly schedule. Benchmark data from the Open Data Catalogue is updated quarterly as new files are published. When the source data changes — for example, if a surgeon moves to a different facility or a new reporting period becomes available — profiles are updated automatically on the next refresh cycle.

If you believe wait time data on a profile is incorrect, please contact us and we will investigate.

Last updated: March 2026