Canadian physicians lose 20 million hours a year to paperwork. What clinics can do about it.

What the study found

In January 2026 the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business published Losing doctors to desk work, based on a national survey of 1,924 physicians. It is the most complete picture yet of where physicians' time goes outside the exam room.

Where the unnecessary work comes from

Physicians named health-system processes (85 percent), insurance companies (76 percent), government forms (59 percent) and pharmacies (58 percent) as sources of unnecessary work, and electronic medical record systems appear on the list as well. The weight is uneven across the country: physicians in Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan report about 10.7 hours a week, and Québec the least, at 7.7.

What it costs a practice

The toll falls on the people a clinic depends on. Ninety-three percent of respondents said paperwork disrupts their work-life balance and 95 percent said it reduces professional fulfilment. More than half intended to reduce their hours, and a quarter had considered retiring early. For a clinic, each of those is capacity that walks out of the building.

The share a clinic controls

Government forms and insurer rules sit outside a clinic's walls. The work between a clinic's own systems sits inside them, and much of it never needed a physician at all:

• Assembling results. Labs, imaging and assessment data gathered into one summary before the physician opens it. See care plan reports.
• Documents and faxes. Read, filed to the right chart and escalated only when a clinician is needed. See faxes and documents.
• Forms. Completed once by the patient and written to every system that needs the answer. See forms and consent.
• The EMR itself. Information written to the record by the system, so nobody retypes it.

Questions, answered