Manitoba leader in reducing medical red tape: CFIB

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This article was published 01/02/2024 (694 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba and Nova Scotia lead the country when it comes to trying to reduce the administrative burden placed on doctors, according to a new report issued by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses and Doctors Manitoba.

Today marks the release of the second annual “Patients Before Paperwork” report outlining how much time Canada’s doctors spend doing administrative tasks like paperwork. The Sun received an advance copy of the report under embargo.

“We’re talking about overly long, complex redundant paperwork, duplicative processes” said CFIB’s provincial director of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and northern Canada, Brianna Solberg, in a phone interview on Wednesday ahead of the report’s official release.

The first report issued in January 2023 estimated that physicians in Manitoba collectively spent around 600,000 hours on unnecessary administrative work.

Shortly after that report was issued, Manitoba’s provincial government announced the creation of a task force aimed at reducing red tape in the health-care system, which included representatives from Doctors Manitoba and the CFIB.

An initial report issued by that task force in May 2023 further estimated that doctors in Manitoba spend 633,000 hours each year on unnecessary administrative tasks, equivalent to around 1.9 million patient visits, and set an initial goal of reducing those figures by 10 per cent.

Solberg said while the task force has yet to issue revised figures since then, the belief is that Manitoba is “making great strides” toward it.

“It’s also not just to spend more time with patients,” she said. “That’s obviously one beneficial outcome of this, but we’re having a lot of doctors who are reaching a point of burnout and it’s a top contributor to physicians actually leaving their practice in Manitoba … A lot of them aren’t just physicians, they’re also business owners and it’s very stressful to be a business owner right now.”

Dr. Randy Guzman, the president-elect of Doctors Manitoba and a member of the provincial task force, said a lot of the administrative burden comes from physicians having to fill out forms that he believes other personnel would be more suited to.

Another challenge is complex computer systems, with many different programs handling different subjects, not all of which can share information between them.

One area he said progress has been made in during the last year has been making it so that doctors don’t have to precisely log the start and stop times for virtual appointments.

“If you’re being more efficient, then you can do more complicated things, spend more time with patients,” Guzman said.

“And you have a better work-life balance, for sure … If you look at the data in terms of burnout, administrative burden is right up there, it’s a consistent factor.”

The active efforts being made by Nova Scotia and Manitoba are what separate those provinces from the rest, though Solberg said the former is “a few years ahead” of Manitoba’s work and is targeting a reduction to 400,000 of unnecessary paperwork by the end of 2024.

Though the CFIB usually advocates for small and independent businesses, Solberg said applying a red tape reduction mindset helps free up time and makes life easier for both people and businesses.

Another issue the CFIB wants to tackle this year, Solberg said, is housing.

“These are two overarching issues that affect the economies and societies in which our business owners operate,” she said.

The mandate for the task force was set to expire in December 2023, but was extended in the physician services agreement made between the provincial government and Doctors Manitoba last summer.

Solberg said her organization has met with Manitoba’s new provincial government elected last October and said new Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara has met with the task force.

Guzman said there was some anxiety after the change in government, but he thinks the new government is committed to working with Doctors Manitoba on the file.

“That’s a really good positive sign that they’re willing to continue this work,” Solberg said. “I think, ultimately, we hope to see a minister within this new government dedicated to red tape.”

Both Alberta and Ontario have ministers assigned to red tape reduction portfolios.

A spokesperson for Asagwara declined to comment on the progress the task force has made ahead of the report’s official release today.

The report was issued as part of the CFIB’s red tape awareness week. Due to the change in government, the organization did not issue Manitoba a letter grade on its annual red tape report card.

The highest-rated provinces were Alberta, Nova Scotia and Ontario, which received respective grades of 9.4, nine and 8.7 out of 10. The lowest rated provinces were Newfoundland and Labrador (4.4 out of 10) and Prince Edward Island (6.5).

The federal government received a score of 6.7 out of 10.

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