Canadian doctors say they are wasting 20 million hours a year on unnecessary paperwork

Dr. Natasha Aziz sees patients all day, returns home to her two young children, then returns to work before the sun rises the next morning, to climb an endless mountain Red ribbon.

“It seems like paperwork never sleeps. Like, every morning when you wake up, there are dozens of things in your inbox,” said Aziz, a family physician in Durham Region, Ontario.

“Even when you’re with the patient, the work of taking care of the patient gets sidelined because you have to do some kind of documentation work.”

Aziz is not alone. Each doctor in Canada spends an average of nine hours per week on administrative tasks, totaling 42.7 million hours annually across the country. According to a new report from the Canadian Medical Association And the Canadian Federation of Independent Business surveyed 1,924 physicians.

Nearly half of this work (47 percent) is spent on tasks that physicians view as unnecessary red tape rather than work important to caring for their patients.

“It’s a burden. It’s overwhelming physicians, and it’s really a disease of red tape,” CMA President Dr. Margot Burnell, an oncologist, told as it happens Host Nil Koksal.

The report found that the brunt of this work falls on family physicians there is already a shortage.

Because of this burden, the report found that doctors are taking fewer patients, or moving away from family practice to areas with lower administrative tolls. A quarter of doctors said they were considering early retirement or leaving the job altogether.

This, in turn, translates wait a long time, emergency room closingAnd One in five Canadians who do not have a family doctor.

Meanwhile, 44 percent of doctors said they would spend more time with their existing patients if they had less paperwork, while 43 percent said they would take on new patients.

“So by reducing the admin burden, everyone wins,” Burnell said. “Physicians win, patients win, and the health care system wins.”

essential vs unnecessary tasks

The paperwork Aziz completes in the morning goes far beyond requesting tests and looking at lab work, the kind of things she says any doctor is expected to do.

It’s tracking patient information spread across multiple systems. This is resubmitting the exact same information multiple times because each pharmacy or clinic has its own specific forms.

Digitization is not necessarily helping, he said, because many times, the software that should make things easier is not up to par.

“Sometimes it’s one step forward, two steps back,” he said. “You have to click a dozen boxes and then the patient history won’t populate because it has a dash in it, which is not a allowed character, you know?”

But his biggest pet peeve? Filling out unnecessarily complex forms at the behest of insurance companies and employers.

“Every day we have patients who bring in forms that they don’t want to get done, we don’t want to get done, but their employer wants to get done,” he said.

That work is not covered by provincial health insurance, he said, so the patient has to pay for it. This is something she would ideally like to see changed through legislation.

“Whenever a third party wants a form filled out by a physician, the third party must pay for the form,” he said. “I think we’ll see a dramatic decline in those requests overnight.”

So what can be done?

The report also makes several recommendations to reduce the administrative burden on doctors.

they include get rid of sick notesexecution AI writers in doctors’ offices Providing a summary of care, simplifying and streamlining insurance and tax forms, delegating duties to other health professionals, and providing paid time off to perform administrative tasks so doctors aren’t doing it on their own time.

Burnell says the CMA is already working with stakeholders to implement some of these changes.

many provinces to pass passed law limiting employers Sick can demand notes. multiple health-care clinics Using AI ScribeOften in government pilot programs to test accuracy and cyber security.

CMA is working with the CRA to simplify the paperwork for Canada Pension Plan Disability and Disability Tax Credits and doctors have identified two forms as the most notorious and time-consuming. the latter is 15 pages long, and cannot be submitted by email.

“We’re making progress,” Burnell said.

have hope

Dr. Ajantha Jayabarathan, a family physician in Halifax, has seen that progress firsthand.

Nova Scotia began implementing its red tape reduction pan for health care in 2021, and by 2025, the government says it has reduced 435,000 hours of red tape for physicians.

“I think we were well ahead of the curve when it became clear that this was a big problem,” Jayabarathan said.

Sick notes are now handled by case workers, referrals for physiotherapy are no longer needed, and pharmacare and requisition forms have been centralized, Jayabarathan said.

“I have a sense of relief that once, for example, if it’s a referral for surgery or a referral for an MRI or ultrasound, I know I’ve done my due diligence, I’ve indicated the level of urgency, it’s gone into a central repository and someone is managing it,” she said.

“Whereas in the past, we would send it and it would be in this dark abyss and we would never know if the note landed or not, and if we heard back, it was a miracle.”

AI tools

But she says what has made the biggest difference to her day-to-day is the use of AI Scribe. With patient consent, the software records appointments and generates summaries that patients can take home or bring to other health care professionals.

“It has really revolutionized what I am able to do with patients,” Jayabarathan said. “Patients are extremely concerned about this.”

However, AI tools are prone to errors, and both Burnell and Jayabarathan say they need human oversight.

Jayabarathan is optimistic about the future of her province, and encourages other provinces to follow her blueprint.

“We’re doing some remarkable things,” he said, “and within the next two to three years we’re going to see a lot of change in the health system.”