Cambridge doctor urges province to cut red tape on World Family Doctor Day

The Cambridge president of the Ontario College of Family Physicians is calling for urgent red tape reductions and administrative support to ensure family doctors have more quality time to spend with patients on May 19, World Family Doctor Day. 

“On World Family Doctor Day, I’d like to recognize the foundational role that family doctors play in our health care system," says Dr. Mekalai Kumanan, president of the Ontario College of Family Physicians, in a press release.

"Family doctors care deeply about our patients, but we unfortunately face significant, system-wide challenges in our day-to-day work. We need solutions to reduce our administrative burden in order to allow us to focus on spending quality time with our patients.” 

The call for action is in response to a new survey, conducted on behalf of the Ontario College of Family Physicians, of more than 1,300 family doctors.

Survey results clearly outline the overwhelming administrative burden family doctors are experiencing:  

• Family doctors report spending 19 hours a week on admin– most of which is unpaid and unnecessary. 

• 94 per cent said they are overwhelmed with administrative/clerical tasks.  

• A full day of seeing patients results in up to five hours spent on admin work. 

• Family doctors need and want more time for direct patient care, but right now about 40 per cent of their time is spent on admin. 

Admin tasks include having to send different referral forms for each specialist, faxing referrals, writing unnecessary sick notes, and filling out lengthy insurance forms that are different for each company. 

Additionally, family doctors, the majority of whom must run their clinics like small businesses, spend several hours every week on tasks required for managing an office. 

Family doctors recognize that some administrative work will always be necessary to support patients. However, there are better, more efficient ways of doing things. Solutions that would provide immediate relief and increase time that family doctors spend with patients, include: 

• Improve outdated digital systems. This includes making a specialist e-referral system available to all family doctors. 

• Provide simpler, shorter and more streamlined insurance, social program and benefit forms. 

• Standardize outgoing forms and referrals. 

• Increase financial support for administrative team members. 

• Hire healthcare team members who can provide family doctors with support. Right now, 75 per cent of family doctors and their patients in Ontario do not have access to this kind of team support.     

As the foundation of the healthcare system, Ontario needs family doctors spending as much time with patients as possible. 

With 161,000 patient visits every day in Ontario, family doctors see more patients than any other healthcare professional, says the release. When patients don’t have access to a family doctor it can mean that immunizations aren’t provided, cancer screenings missed, and patients may be forced to use hospital emergency rooms for issues that are not urgent.