Quebec doctors complain about it, as do their colleagues elsewhere in Canada: the paperwork and superfluous administrative tasks are too numerous and prevent them from caring for patients. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) agrees. According to his estimates, physicians in Canada devote 18.5 million hours to these activities per year, or the equivalent of 55.6 million medical consultations per year.
In a report released Monday, CFIB calls on provincial and territorial governments to eliminate “unnecessary” paperwork and administrative tasks for doctors. If the latter were abolished or entrusted to other professionals, approximately 13.2 million additional medical consultations could be offered each year in Quebec, according to the CFIB.
The group of SMEs recognizes that reducing the administrative burden on doctors is “far from constituting a panacea” for Canadian healthcare systems. But by reducing these superfluous tasks by just 10%, “provinces and territories could reduce physician fatigue and burnout, improve the quality of care and save time equivalent to 5.5 million consultations per year. nationwide, he calculates.
The authors of the report base their estimates on a 2020 study conducted in Nova Scotia. From Nova Scotia data, they extrapolate figures for other provinces — assuming “relatively comparable working conditions and administrative tasks.”
In Nova Scotia, physicians spend more than one day per week (10.6 hours) on administrative work, the 2020 study found. According to survey participants, 62% of these tasks are necessary, but 38% are superfluous, ie they could be carried out by other people (24%) or be eliminated (14%).
Faced with these figures, the Nova Scotia government has undertaken to clean up the paperwork of doctors. By the end of 2023, it pledged to cut 50,000 hours of time doctors spend on unnecessary administrative tasks. More than a dozen measures have been put in place, such as the simplification of forms, such as requests for exceptional drugs.
In Quebec, the Federation of General Practitioners of Quebec (FMOQ) would like a working committee on paperwork to be formed very soon. “Today or tomorrow we will send an official request to Minister Christian Dubé to sit down together and try to find solutions,” said the director of public affairs, Jean-Pierre Dion.
The FMOQ will testify Tuesday in a parliamentary committee during consultations on Bill 3 on health and social services information. In the memoir that she will submit, she mentions a survey conducted a year ago among 2,248 general practitioners. “The results indicate that 24.25% of the workload of family doctors would be devoted to administrative work, it is written. We are talking here, for example, of 9.7 hours per 40 hours of work […] These activities are far too time-consuming and take place at the expense of clinical work. »
The FMOQ lists in its brief the many forms that physicians must complete: disability insurance for salary, mortgage insurance, personal loan insurance, travel insurance, life insurance, driver’s license, etc.
The doctors’ union says it wants to work with Quebec to revise the forms of public bodies and take steps together with insurers.