Good morning. Welcome to the Postcall newsletter: the chillest weekly newsletter for Canadian doctors.

It’s like your favourite AED, bringing life to your day. And like an AED… share us with a friend to bring life to their day. You can get some free merch!

Here's what we got for ya today:

• No more re-referral re-quired 🫡 

• Is Elon going to be homeless soon? 🏘️ 

• 🤑 Daily Financial Independence tip

• Quick bites 🍉

• 😆 Meme of the Day

First, a quick look at the numbers:

No more re-referrals required 🛫 

Patients won’t need to ask their family doctor for a new referral after six months to see a specialist for the same condition, starting July 1.

Why? Too many specialists needing to do bullshit paperwork as the only way to bill for the consult. And too many family doctors with clearly chronic cases that need rubberstamping.

What does this mean for me? With the new referral fee structure, specialists seeing a referred patient after six months can bill a full consultation if all requirements of a consultation are met, while family physicians will no longer charge MSP for unnecessary re-referrals.

Postcall’s take: If you were dependent on the bureaucracy to get your billings… oof. If not, now you have time to spend on actual patient care. Win-win! 🏆️ 

Details

Can you spare a few bucks for… Elon?

Uh oh. Turns out, it don’t matter if you Joe Schmo or the richest guy in the world, not paying rent is going to get you kicked out of the office.

What happened: The world of social media just took a wild turn with Twitter getting hit with the ultimate 'block' function in real life - eviction from its Boulder office, for not paying the rent.

Why it's interesting: Twitter - a platform famous for outing bad behavior and becoming a global stage for airing grievances - is now in the hot seat. At Elon is holding up his end of the bargain on free speech. In truth, this may just be a smart but unethical way to just reduce costs on office space in a work-from-home world.

Bottom line: When your MOA tells you some bills need paying… don’t fuck around. You probably have less clout than Elon.

Show me the MONEY 💰️ 

For all your newer staff, older residents, or anyone who wants a refresher, check out this Adapting to Practice webinar from the nice folks at MNP. If you’re in between patients and don’t want to watch, here’s a quick takeaway:

What is it? Video about how to transition to practice, with tips on money and taxes.

Why did they do this? MNP’s hoping to make the money back on charging you pretty high fees to manage money. But luckily you can take the advice here and just do it yourself for free.

Ok, how? Three takeaways:

1. If you’re buying a home, use these three things (amount of tax you save in brackets): HBTC ($1.5K), FHSA ($2.4K), and HBP via RRSP ($10.5K). Google each of those acronyms and then get that bag 💰️ 

2. Avoid basic mistakes like 1) not repaying your loans, 2) failing to use registered accounts like RRSPs/TFSAs to build wealth and 3) buying hot investments like GME. Don’t be a wall street bets bro. And if you don’t know what that is, you’re on the right track already 😉 

3. Incorporate in order to defer personal tax. Only worth the extra cost and paperwork if you can spend >$50K/year less than you earn.

3 Quick Bites

1: The US Fed FINALLY paused interest rate hikes, after hiking it 10 times in a row since March 2022. 📊 “They were giving themselves time to assess” - but that doesn’t mean you should be whipping out that LOC to buy GME again. Rates are the same, not lower. BUT the differential between US and CAD interest rates will be good news for the loonie — and by extension, Canada’s inflation fight. Get ready for some US shopping!

2: A deer went swimming with the orcas… 🐋 

3: A submarine visiting the Titanic wreck went missing 🚢 . An international coalition of rescue teams (including Canada) are searching for them as time runs out on their oxygen. Some folks on a surveillance airplane reported hearing some “banging” noise in the area, giving us all some hope. 🤞 

Meme of the Day 😜 

That’s a wrap for this edition of Postcall. Share the Newsletter and we’ll hook it up. Seriously, we bought some prizes and we’re dying to give em to you.