Vancouver: At a time when Canada is battling with shortage of physicians, Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) in their survey have found that physicians are wasting long time on paper work.
As per survey, Physicians in Canada spend an average of nine hours per week, or nearly one-fifth of their total working time, on administrative tasks, amounting to about 42.7 million hours per year nationwide. Of this time, respondents estimate that 47% is spent on unnecessary tasks, representing approximately 19.8 million hours. This unnecessary time is equivalent to the work of 9,093 full-time physicians, or about 9% of Canada’s active physician workforce.
“Health care challenges, such as long wait times, emergency department closures, and staffing shortages, affect everyone, including family doctors that own practices. Doctors are spending too much time on work that could be eliminated entirely or done by someone else. Cutting red tape isn’t optional anymore, it’s a critical solution we can’t afford to ignore,” said Corinne Pohlmann, CFIB executive vice-president of advocacy.
Eliminating the 20 million hours of unnecessary paperwork and administrative tasks, doctors face annually would free up the equivalent of 9,000 full time physicians, according to Losing doctors to desk work: Canadian physicians lose 20 million hours each year to red tape Opens survey. The findings were released today as part of CFIB’s 17th annual Red Tape Awareness Week.
Most physicians (85%) said unnecessary work stems mainly from health-system processes, insurance companies (76%), government forms (59%), pharmacies (58%), and electronic record systems (51%). The most demanding tasks include insurance paperwork, referrals and test requisitions, and electronic documentation. The Disability Tax Credit, private insurance forms, and Canada Pension Plan Disability are among the most time-consuming forms.
The impact goes beyond lost time. Almost all (93%) of doctors say it disrupts work-life balance, 95% feel less fulfilled professionally, while 90% link it to burnout. More than half plan to cut their hours because of administrative burden, and 25% are even considering early retirement.
For individual doctors that means reclaiming up to 199 hours a year, more than a full month of working time.
If the administrative burden on physicians is reduced, most doctors (79%) would reinvest the freed-up time to improve their work-life balance, 44% would spend more time with existing patients, and 43% would take on new ones , a strong majority (72%) support eliminating some administrative tasks and better system integration, particularly through the interoperability of patient care records (71%), Other top recommendations include simplifying insurer processes, delegating duties to other health professionals, and providing protected, paid administrative time and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another potential solution to save time and free up resources, with 28% of physicians currently using at least one AI scribe tool and another 42% expressing interest.
“Reducing paperwork would ease stress and give doctors more time for quality patient care, professional growth and personal well-being. Even small cuts to the physician administrative burden can make a big difference for millions of Canadians,” said Keyli Loeppky, CFIB director of interprovincial affairs.