File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Michael Reeve

REDUCING ADMINISTRATIVE BURDEN

Grant funding helps Shuswap Cardiac Society forge new methods of reducing administrative burden on doctors

Jun 18, 2024 | 5:30 PM

SALMON ARM, B.C. — It’s estimated that 18.5 million hours are spent by physicians on unnecessary administrative tasks every year. Across the country, 11 healthcare organizations and societies received a share of $10 million in grant funding from the Canadian Medical Association to help find ways to cut down on the administrative burden on doctors so they can see and treat more patients.

British Columbia’s lone grant recipient is the Shuswap Cardiac Society, whose initiative includes changing the way appointments work.

“Through this initiative, the Shuswap Cardiac Society is reimagining how medical appointments take place, prioritizing patients and providers coming together as equal contributors to patients’ care plans. Medical office assistants, supported by AI technology, will scribe the sessions with documentation projected for the patient to see. This will free up physicians to focus on their patients while allowing greater transparency and giving patients the tools to be active champions of their own healthcare decisions,” reads a statement from Canadian Medical Association website on the approved grant. “As most administrative duties will be performed during patient appointments, this will significantly reduce physicians’ administrative burden and give them more time to focus on what they do best: caring for patients.”

More time face to face with patients is the crux of the idea that not only brings the patients closer to their own healthcare solutions but allows doctors to prioritize patients over paperwork.

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“By having the patient being more of an active partner in their care, the physician would be able to see more patients — but also, the time I spend with my patients, I won’t be filling forms and focusing on my computer the whole time,” said Dr. Laurie Main, Shuswap Cardiac Society. “We have initiatives to try to leverage all the help we can have from the patient and also be able to provide them better service at the end.”

Thanks to the grant funding, Dr. Main is changing the way her office operates through use of AI scribing technology and help from medical office assistants to provide a higher quality of care and giving patients a more active role their healthcare journeys.

“We are really putting the patients at the centre of this and that efficiency won’t come at a cost to the care that the patients receive and really we hope to increase the quality of care that they are receiving,” added project co-lead Courtney Brown.

Over the course of a day, a doctor spends approximately 45 per cent of their time completing charts and doing other administrative duties. The dream of the Shuswap Cardiac Society is to cut that figure down closer to 10 per cent.

“It’s certainly going to increase my efficiency by, I would expect, at least 50 per cent to 100 per cent increase in the amount of patients I can see in any given day. At the end of the day, I do spend half of my time not looking at patients,” said Dr. Main.

It’s anticipated that the program will have an even bigger impact on smaller practices and communities, which have less manpower at their disposal to complete administrative tasks.

“We are certainly much more affected in our smaller sites. In bigger sites, they often have a medical trainee that does all the paperwork for the doctors and do all the explanation to the patient. But in smaller centres, we are often underserved in that sense, as well,” said Dr. Main.

The initiative has been implemented at Dr. Main’s office in Salmon Arm, but the hope is to spread it across the Interior and B.C.

While aimed at specialists, it should also help cut down on appointments for overworked GPs, potentially opening more family doctor spots for unattached patients.

Currently in Kamloops, approximately 40,000 residents are without a family doctor.