Doctors will soon be facing less paperwork as the Ontario government takes steps to get them more time in front of patients.
In an announcement made on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, the provincial government announced a spate of initiatives all aimed at getting doctors and other primary care providers in Ontario more time with patients and less time with administrative and other duties associated with their work. According to the province, the government will achieve this with several different initiatives, including replacing fax machines to speed up diagnoses, referrals and treatments, expanding eServices in the industry to digitize more referral and consultation forms so they can be conveniently shared electronically, working with the Ontario Medical Association to streamline and simplify 12 key government medical forms, and accelerating the expansion of a centralized waitlist program for surgical and diagnostic services. The government also said it is planning to encourage employers use tools other than sick notes, such as attestation, that is said “will help maintain accountability as employees request time off sick.”
“Our government is making common sense changes that will reduce the administrative burden on family doctors so that they can spend more time caring for patients instead of doing duplicative or unnecessary paperwork,” said Sylvia Jones, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health.
According to the government, these moves will free up 95,000 hours annually for physicians to put back into their practices to care for patients.
Potentially controversially, the government also announced it would be expanding a program to 150 primary care providers to allow them to use artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically summarize or transcribe conversations with patients who consent into electronic medical notes. The province stressed that the AI scribes will only be used if the patient gives their consent, with the privacy of health information continuing to be protected under the province’s Personal Health Information Act, 2004. The government claims that research shows the use of medical scribes reduces the amount of time doctors spent on after-hours documentation by up to 50 percent, and helped clinicians see 12 additional patients each month.
“Reducing the administrative burden of Ontario’s physicians is critical in improving our health-care system, and today’s announcement is a positive step forward,” said the Ontario Medical Association’s Dr. Andrew Park.
“We encourage government to continue taking action, making the investments necessary and working with OMA every step of the way, to build the health-care system Ontarians deserve.”
