{"id":434882,"date":"2026-01-26T19:28:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T19:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/434882\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T19:28:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T19:28:19","slug":"doctors-look-to-ai-to-cut-burdensome-administrative-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/434882\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors look to AI to cut burdensome administrative work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Doctors work at the ER department at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) in Montreal in April, 2025.Graham Hughes\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Physicians are spending hours a week on unnecessary administrative tasks, but artificial intelligence tools are helping to reduce that workload, according to a new report by the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. <\/p>\n

The two groups \u2013 which represent doctors and small businesses, respectively \u2013 surveyed 1,924 physicians last July and August about how much time they feel is wasted on red tape.<\/p>\n

On average, the doctors said they spent about nine hours a week on administrative tasks, about half of which they felt was unnecessary. About three-quarters of respondents identified the most burdensome tasks as insurance paperwork, referrals, and test requisitions and electronic documentation. <\/p>\n

More than nine in 10 doctors surveyed said the extra paperwork was disrupting their work-life balance, harming their professional fulfilment and contributing to burnout.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more time that physicians spend on unnecessary paperwork, the less time they have to see patients,\u201d said Margot Burnell, CMA president and an oncologist in New Brunswick.<\/p>\n

AI health gadgets like those at CES come with accuracy, privacy concerns, experts say<\/a><\/p>\n

But one bright spot in the survey was the use of AI tools to help fill out forms. Nearly half of surveyed physicians (45 per cent) said it was a high-priority solution for cutting down on paperwork, and those who reported using AI tools (28 per cent) said it was reducing their workload by an hour per day.<\/p>\n

One of the most popular applications of AI with physicians are AI scribe tools, which can listen in to a doctor\u2019s appointment with a patient, interpret the conversation into clinical notes, and auto-populate forms that the doctor can later review and approve. These applications save doctors the time of writing down notes during or after the appointment.<\/p>\n

Still, these tools can come with their own obstacles. About half of respondents (49 per cent) said there were privacy and legal risks if the tools were not used correctly.<\/p>\n

For example, Ontario\u2019s privacy watchdog recently issued a cautionary letter<\/a> to a hospital, where a doctor had used an unauthorized transcription tool that ending up e-mailing confidential patient information to many current and former hospital employees.<\/p>\n

AI bot recorded doctors\u2019 meeting, sent patient info to current and former hospital staff, watchdog says<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWho is it shared with, who owns the data, is all very critical,\u201d Dr. Burnell said.<\/p>\n

Costs and difficulty choosing among the multitude of technology companies coming to market with these tools were also cited as concerns. <\/p>\n

\u201cPhysicians do not have the capability to test each one of those because the number on the market is just increasing exponentially,\u201d Dr. Burnell said.<\/p>\n

About a third of respondents said they hoped for help identifying and vetting vendors and negotiating preferred pricing. A third also said they wanted more training and \u201ctips and tricks\u201d for using AI scribe tools.<\/p>\n

Jean-Joseph Cond\u00e9, a family physician in Val-d\u2019Or, Que., and member of the CMA board, noted that many providers of electronic medical-record (EMR) systems<\/a> are now adding AI tools directly into their platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, this is going to help many doctors starting to use AI scribe because it\u2019s going to be incorporated in their EMR,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Doctors work at the ER department at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,6347,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-434882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-ne-i","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}