Axe the fax and move into the 21st century

Manitoba’s health-care system is plagued by long waits, crowded emergency rooms and chronic staffing shortages. But it is also bogged down by something less dramatic and far more absurd.

Fax machines.

Yes, fax machines. In 2026.

Doctors Manitoba’s new report, bluntly titled Axe the Fax, should be required reading at the legislature and in every health authority boardroom. Not because it contains some radical reinvention of medicine, but because it shines a harsh light on the daily inefficiencies that quietly sabotage patient care and waste physician time.

According to the report, most of the roughly one million referrals to specialists and diagnostic imaging requests made every year by Manitoba doctors are still faxed or sent through the mail. And 85 per cent of doctor-to-doctor consultations are also delivered by fax or envelope.

In this day of instant electronic communication, that is unacceptable.

The fax machine is not merely outdated technology, it is a symbol of a health-care system that has accepted delay, duplication and dysfunction as normal. Manitobans may not see these processes behind the scenes, but they feel the consequences every time they wait weeks for a scan, months for a specialist or sit in limbo wondering whether their referral was received, misplaced or sent to the wrong office.

Doctors Manitoba president Dr. Nichelle Desilets is right to call this what it is: a last-century system that creates last-century results.

The health-care debate in Manitoba often revolves around big-ticket items: more operating room time, more beds, more doctors, more nurses. All of those matter. But there is a quieter, equally important reality: even when you have the staff, you can still waste their time.

And in a system stretched to the breaking point, wasted physician time is not a minor inconvenience — it is a direct contributor to longer wait times and poorer patient care.

Consider what fax-based referrals actually mean in practice. A doctor fills out a form, sends it by fax, hopes it goes through, and then waits. A specialist’s office receives a faded or incomplete copy, perhaps missing pages, perhaps illegible.

Staff then manually sort it, manually enter it and manually file it. Sometimes the referral sits. Sometimes it’s lost. Sometimes it’s sent to the wrong specialist and the process starts again. All the while, the patient waits. This is not just inefficiency. It is gridlock, and it is self-inflicted.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says the province is taking steps: a digital health card, centralized surgical referrals and plans for a provincial electronic patient record by next year.

Those are welcome developments. But Manitobans have heard modernization promises before, and they have learned to be skeptical.

This is where the government must show urgency. Fax elimination should not be treated as a side project, or a nice-to-have once bigger reforms are complete. It should be seen as a necessary treatment for the administrative disease that clogs the system.

The Doctors Manitoba recommendations are practical and overdue: a provincial physician directory so referrals reach the right specialist the first time; properly resourced central intake systems; urgent fixes to diagnostic imaging backlogs; and, crucially, the digitization of referrals and consults.

The goal, as Desilets said, is simple: give doctors back wasted time and give patients faster access.

A modern health-care system requires modern tools. That means secure electronic referrals, electronic diagnostic requests, tracking, triage and accountability. It means fewer forms, fewer resends, fewer lost documents and more time for patients.

So yes, axe the fax. And do it now.

» Winnipeg Free Press