With doctors 'drowning in paperwork,' advocacy group wants Manitoba to act
Cutting back on administrative work physicians have to do would mean freeing them up to see more patients
A doctor's advocacy organization in Manitoba is urging the province to act to reduce the amount of administrative work physicians are tasked with.
Dr. Candace Bradshaw, president of Doctors Manitoba and a family physician, said that work includes doing paperwork, completing electronic medical records and "other time-consuming bureaucratic practices" — and it means doctors are left with less time to actually see patients.
"Simply put, physicians are drowning in paperwork," Bradshaw said during a Zoom news conference on Monday afternoon, where she also said the administrative burden is a leading cause of burnout among physicians.
"It is absolutely soul-sucking work, because we know a lot of it is unnecessary and yet we are required to do it."
Part of the problem is that there's no one source creating all this extra work, Bradshaw said.
It comes from hospitals, local health systems, provincial and federal governments, regulators and private insurance companies.
Bradshaw said in her own practice, the administrative burden has included things like having to submit the same form for drug exemptions every year for a patient who will need the medication for her whole life, because the drug can only be approved for a year at a time.
She estimates more than half the time she spends on each patient visit is on administrative duties.
"We went into medicine to care for patients. I want to be with my patients and spend more time with them," Bradshaw said.
"We did not go into medicine to do data entry and fill out form after form, with redundant questions and things that could be managed much differently."
Millions more patient visits possible: report
The call from Doctors Manitoba comes on the same day as a report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business that says doctors across the country spend 18.5 million hours on unnecessary administrative work every year — the equivalent of 55.6 million patient visits.
That report helps people understand the scope of a longstanding problem that doctors have urged governments to address for years, Bradshaw said.
In Manitoba, physicians spend about 591,000 hours on that work per year, which is equal to about 1.8 million patient visits, she said.
The report outlines recommendations for reducing the administrative burden on doctors, including measuring how big that burden is, setting a specific target for reducing it and assigning responsibility for who will oversee that work.
It concludes that if governments across Canada set a target to reduce administrative workload by 10 per cent, that could cut down on fatigue and burnout, improve the quality of patient care and free up doctors for the equivalent of 5.5 million patient visits a year.
Manitoba task force promised
In Manitoba, a 10 per cent reduction would open the equivalent of 177,000 patient visits annually.
That would go a long way to improve access to care and reduce "record levels of burnout" seen in doctors right now, Bradshaw said.
It's an issue the province pledged to address in November by creating a joint task force, after Doctors Manitoba recommended action on it last year, Bradshaw said.
She added she's optimistic the government will move on that promise soon, though "it frankly cannot be soon enough."
When asked for details about the status of that task force, a government spokesperson said in a written statement that the province is working with Doctors Manitoba to "help reduce unnecessary administrative burdens faced by physicians."
"We looking forward to providing an update on this initiative in the near future," the spokesperson said.