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Doctors want to practice medicine. Instead, we are buried in paperwork
Two-and-a-half million people living in Ontario do not have a family doctor, according to the Ontario College of Family Physicians. In fact, it is estimated that by 2026 a quarter of people living in Ontario will be in this predicament.
Unfortunately, many family doctors are giving up their practices and fewer medical students are choosing family medicine.
When I trained to become a family doctor in Ontario almost two decades ago, the atmosphere surrounding the job was very different. During medical school, I was taught to use science to solve medical problems, to work in partnership with specialists, and to provide support to the patients under my care. None of my training focused on how to deal with the mountain of paperwork, administrative tasks and clerical responsibilities that I find myself responsible for daily. This growing administrative burden is destroying family medicine.
Administrative burden is a catch-all term to describe all the work a family physician does each day that does not include seeing patients. I complete this work before or after my clinic hours and in the few moments between seeing patients, but often it is done after hours. On a typical day, forms littering my desk include work notes, requests for massage therapy, home care forms, test requisitions, travel grants and special medication applications; the list goes on and on.
My ancient fax machine never stops spewing out medication refill requests from pharmacies. I shudder when I see the 16-page disability tax credit application land on my desk. Onerous disability insurance forms are different for each insurance company with anywhere from 20 to 100 questions. Lawyer’s requests for letters often require scouring years of medical documentation. It is critical that I fill out these forms but they take more and more time each year, time I would rather spend seeing patients in the clinic.
The administrative burden doesn’t end with all this paperwork.
