In a report titled Patients before the paperwork presented on Monday FCEI explains that the administrative burden on physicians wastes a considerable amount of time.
The federation defines the term paperwork
as superfluous administrative tasks that do not require the clinical expertise of a physician.
According to FCEI, these tasks interfere with care by reducing the time physicians can spend with their patients and the number of new patients they might care for
. They also lead to significant fatigue among physicians, according to the FCEI.
One day per week devoted to administrative tasks
To estimate the administrative burden across the country, the FCEI extrapolated numbers from this Nova Scotia study, conducted in 2020 in partnership with Doctors Nova Scotia, assuming relatively uniform working and administrative conditions across the country.
It showed that each physician in the province spends an average of 10.6 hours per week on administrative tasks such as writing medical reports, medical certificates, billing and auditing, managing the practice and participating in administrative meetings.
For doctors, this represents more than one day of work per week and for the Canadian system, 55.6 million consultations per year.
In Nova Scotia, the FCEI estimates that hours spent on unnecessary administrative tasks accounted for nearly 1.7 million consultations. In New Brunswick, it is 1.2 million, in a context where access to primary health care is a major challenge for the province.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, the figure is 815,000 and 203,000 in Prince Edward Island.
More than 150 full-time physicians would be needed in New Brunswick to perform these administrative tasks. They would be 103 in Newfoundland and Labrador and 26 in Prince Edward Island.
Upcoming improvements in Nova Scotia
The Nova Scotia government has committed to reducing the administrative burden on physicians by 10% by 2024, or approximately 50,000 hours.
Several measures have been taken to try to save doctors time. Redundant or complex forms have been simplified, outdated processes have been improved. The province is also trying to relieve doctors of tasks that could be done by other people.
The FCEI which recommends that other provinces follow Nova Scotia’s example.
The Federation also wants them to do their own studies to quantify the burden of administrative tasks for doctors in an attempt to reduce it.