It was 10 years ago, in the summer of 2014, that Dr.Bill was launched in British Columbia. It all started simply enough at a dining room table. A husband with an Excel spreadsheet was simply trying to help his physician wife deal with her endless piles of billing paperwork.
From day one (and doctor #1!) Dr.Bill has strived to make medical billing easier and more accurate for Canadian physicians. In 2017, Dr.Bill expanded beyond BC to service physicians in Ontario and Alberta as well. To continue building the best medical billing platform in Canada, Dr.Bill was acquired by RBC Ventures, now known as RBCx, in February 2020.
Although a lot has changed since Dr.Bill first launched, the team’s dedication to improving the lives of physicians has never wavered. In what feels like the blink of an eye, we’re here celebrating 10 years in business and $5 billion in physician income processed through the platform!
A decade of progress at a glance:
Tales from our longtime team members
While there are too many individuals to mention by name, there are some Dr.Bill team members who can provide unique insight into this inspirational growth story. Both Veronica Borda and Megan Halstead joined Dr.Bill before the RBC acquisition.
Veronica Borda: Team Lead, Ontario Billing Agent Manager
“When I joined Dr.Bill there were roughly 100 clients in Ontario. I was hired as their first full-time billing agent and for the first six months it was just me,” recalls Veronica. “Now I’m a team lead working with multiple billing agents who help manage thousands of clients across Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Dr.Bill had around 17 employees when I started and now it’s over 130!”
She says a lot of credit can be given to RBCx for keeping operations, engineering, tech and marketing on the same page. It was also a key factor in how the acquisition and merger with MDBilling.ca went so smoothly.
RBC acquired MDBilling.ca, a cloud-based platform that automates and simplifies medical billing for Canadian physicians, in October 2022.
“As one unified team, we take pride in what we do every day because our work is important. Medical school doesn’t teach doctors how to bill or how to navigate a 980-page schedule of benefits. In Ontario, doctors get paid once a month so it’s critical that we get it right the first time.”
Veronica is also proud of how Dr.Bill has supported the medical community as it has grown. Last year Dr.Bill donated $150,000 to the Ontario Medical Foundation, the charitable arm of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), to address the ongoing issue of physician burnout. This year Dr.Bill donated another $100,000 to fund peer-to-peer initiatives for rural and remote physicians.
“With these donations, we’re going beyond our product to make a difference in healthcare. It makes me feel good to work for a company that genuinely cares about the wellbeing of the doctors it serves.”
Looking to the future, Veronica expects Dr.Bill to be even bigger and better, and more integrated with medical associations and provincial Ministries of Health. “In a perfect world, I would have one of those red hotline phones with direct access so I could receive code and fee changes as they happen and solve any billing issues almost instantly!”
Megan Halstead: Director of Operations
Like Veronica, Megan Halstead has seen a lot of changes and growth over the six years she has been at Dr.Bill. Based in Kelowna, BC, Megan joined Dr.Bill as a contractor doing manual data entry. Today, she is Director of Operations.
When Dr.Bill was acquired by RBC, Megan recalls all the changes were for the better. “RBC provided an extra layer of security and stability for our clients as well as supported Dr.Bill’s goals for giving back to our hardworking healthcare communities. We also gained the scale to invest even more in enhancing our product’s capabilities.”
“It was an exciting time and a huge learning curve, especially during that first year,” Megan continues. “However, all that learning served us well during the MDBilling.ca acquisition in 2022. At that time, we welcomed 5,000+ new clients and more than 30 MDBilling.ca staff members to the Dr.Bill team. I’ve never seen a merger run so smoothly! Our teams worked together seamlessly from the start, sharing knowledge and ensuring a disruption-free experience for clients. Though we operated on different platforms, we quickly found we shared the same goal: to make doctors’ lives better.”
Megan says that all of this growth opened up new opportunities for Dr.Bill to become a more involved collaborator in Canada’s complex medical system. In 2023, Dr.Bill engaged in its first public sector partnership with Doctors of BC and the MSP. “It was very exciting when we were approached by Doctors of BC to support the revolutionary new LFP payment model for BC family physicians.”
Family physicians have long been challenged by the traditional fee-for-service payment model. The blended LFP (Longitudinal Family Physician) payment model supports family doctors by recognizing the complexity of long-term patient care.
“We developed the technology physicians and nurse practitioners could use to submit their patient panels through Dr.Bill, whether they were our clients or not," says Megan. “As a result of the success with LFP, medical associations and ministries of health are proactively reaching out to Dr.Bill for insights into other ways we may be able to help modernize billing systems and make admin more efficient for physicians, administrators and hospitals.”
Megan believes the future holds many more opportunities for Dr.Bill to make a difference and she’d love to see Dr.Bill operate in every province and territory.
“Doctors across Canada share similar challenges with billing. I know everyone at Dr.Bill is eager to help them too,” says Megan.
10 years, $5 billion in claims… and 11,000+ clients!
As Canada’s medical billing leader, today Dr.Bill proudly services more than 11,000 physicians and teams in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario with modernized medical billing solutions. With each passing year, Dr.Bill looks forward to empowering even more physicians and healthcare professionals to do what they do best—provide exceptional care to their patients. Here’s to many more years of innovation, growth and making a meaningful impact in the healthcare community!
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