Page "Medicare (Canada)" Paragraph 2

With rare exceptions, medical doctors are small for-profit independent businesses.

Historically, they have practiced in small solo or group practices and billed the medicare system on a fee for service basis.

Unlike the practice in some other countries, hospital-based physicians were rarely hospital employees, and also billed the provincial insurance plans on a fee-for-service basis.

Since 2000, physicians have been allowed to incorporate for tax reasons ( dates of authorization vary province to province ).

However, efforts to achieve primary health care reform have increasingly encouraged physicians to work in multidisciplinary teams, and be paid through blended funding models, including elements of capitation and other ' alternative funding formulas '.

Similarly, some hospitals ( particularly teaching hospitals and rural / remote hospitals ) have also experimented with alternatives to fee-for-service.