Across North America, healthcare leaders increasingly agree on one point: the administrative workload placed on physicians has reached unsustainable levels. The problem is especially pronounced in primary care, where physicians face mounting paperwork, documentation, and scheduling demands that reduce the time available for direct patient care.
New national data released during Red Tape Awareness Week highlights the scale of the challenge. The report, Losing Doctors to Desk Work, published by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), finds that family physicians spend an average of 9.9 hours each week on administrative tasks, more than medical or surgical specialists. More troubling, the study concludes that 85 percent of physicians report having no administrative support at all, leaving them to manage many non-clinical tasks themselves.
The consequences extend beyond physician burnout. According to the report, eliminating unnecessary administrative work could free capacity equivalent to more than 9,000 full-time physicians, roughly nine percent of Canada’s active medical workforce.
For healthcare leaders facing workforce shortages, improving operational efficiency may represent one of the most immediate opportunities to expand care capacity.
Why Primary Care Faces the Heaviest Administrative Burden
While physicians across specialties face administrative pressures, family medicine is uniquely exposed to these challenges.
According to Clark Van Oyen, CEO of healthcare workflow automation company Cortico, the issue largely stems from the high patient volumes typical of primary care.
“Because of the shorter nature of primary care visits, appointment volume tends to be far higher in primary care than in other medical specialties,” Van Oyen says. “Admin overhead largely accrues per appointment, so family physicians who are seeing twenty-plus patients a day, often back-to-back, accrue a huge administrative burden.”
This dynamic creates a compounding effect. Each patient visit generates documentation, referrals, insurance verification, intake forms, prescription processing, and follow-up communication. When multiplied across dozens of daily appointments, administrative tasks quickly consume a significant portion of clinic operations.
Scheduling alone represents a major operational bottleneck.
“In my experience working with clinics, scheduling patients is the single largest underlying driver of lost capacity,” Van Oyen says. “Scheduling alone accounts for forty percent of all the work of support staff. When this is automated, support staff are then off the phones and available to relieve most other admin functions from physicians.”
Because many family medicine clinics operate with limited administrative staff, the team members who might otherwise help physicians manage documentation are frequently occupied managing phone calls and scheduling logistics.
“In short, the support staff that family physicians do have are occupied all day managing clinic operations,” Van Oyen says. “So they can’t provide much direct support with reducing admin burden.”
Administrative Burden and the Physician Pipeline
Administrative workload is also shaping the future physician workforce. The CMA report finds that 53 percent of medical students say paperwork and administrative tasks discourage them from pursuing family medicine, and 70 percent report being extremely or very worried about the administrative demands they will face in practice.
The result is a potential pipeline challenge for primary care.
Van Oyen believes the issue raises broader questions about the healthcare system’s responsibility to future clinicians.
“I don’t think it will contribute to access issues, as Canada will just import GPs or expand access to nurse practitioners as they have demonstrated prior,” he says. “However, if you care about supporting Canadian students who are passionate about family medicine, then I think there’s certainly an ethical issue that needs to be addressed.”
The growing administrative burden may therefore affect not only physician retention but also the long-term sustainability of primary care as a career path.
A Shift Toward Workflow Automation
While policy solutions and reimbursement changes are frequently debated, many healthcare innovators believe operational improvements may offer faster relief.
Rather than focusing solely on clinical AI, such as diagnostic tools, some health technology leaders argue that automation of routine workflows could deliver more immediate benefits.
Van Oyen refers to this operational layer as the “execution layer” of healthcare.
“If you speak to doctors, they’re not saying, ‘I want to spend less time on delivering care or clinical diagnostics,’” he says. “What they’re saying is, ‘I want to spend less time on administrative tasks, so I have more time for clinical care.’”
He adds that administrative complexity often interferes with the most valuable part of healthcare: direct interaction between clinicians and patients.
“Doctors generally want to practice medicine, and patients want to be seen by human doctors,” Van Oyen says. “But there’s this whole layer of administrative noise that interferes with the human-to-human aspect of healthcare.”
Workflow automation platforms are increasingly designed to address these operational tasks. Technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI-assisted document management can automate scheduling, patient intake, referral triage, and routine communication.
By shifting these tasks to digital workflows, clinics may be able to reduce manual workload while maintaining clinical quality.
Measuring the Operational Impact
Healthcare executives evaluating automation technologies often focus on return on investment. According to Van Oyen, several operational metrics can help determine whether new systems are delivering measurable benefits.
“The metrics I think leaders should pay most attention to are error correction rates, admin staff to clinician ratio, availability of relevant care records—or redundant orders conversely—physician admin time, and wait times for care,” he says.
“These numbers are all very connected. When they’re moving in the right direction, clinicians are happier, patients have a better care experience, and practices are generally more profitable.”
Early results from automation deployments suggest measurable operational gains. Clinics adopting digital workflow platforms report reductions in documentation errors, improved appointment availability, and significant reductions in administrative workload.
For example, Cortico reports that clinics using its platform facilitated more than 3 million patient appointments in 2025, with over 300,000 appointments managed online each month. More than 25,000 new patients registered digitally each month, and the system processed over 700,000 prescriptions annually through automated workflows.
These digital systems can also reduce reliance on phone-based operations—a longstanding source of inefficiency in medical practices.
The Rise of the “Phone-Free” Clinic
One of the most visible changes in clinic operations is the gradual shift away from phone-dependent workflows. Many healthcare practices continue to rely heavily on telephone calls for scheduling, patient intake, and communication, creating bottlenecks for both patients and staff.
Automation platforms are increasingly enabling clinics to transition toward digital-first models that allow patients to schedule appointments, complete intake forms, request prescriptions, and communicate with providers online.
Van Oyen believes this shift may ultimately reshape how clinics operate.
“Absolutely,” he says when asked whether a fully phone-free clinic is a realistic future model. “Many clinics using Cortico don’t have inbound phone functions and still maintain very strong standards of care and high patient satisfaction rates.”
Removing phone systems can also free administrative staff to focus on higher-value tasks.
“If anything, taking phones out of the equation tends to free up staff capacity to deliver more attentive care,” Van Oyen says.
Concerns about digital access, particularly among older patients, have not materialized as strongly as some healthcare leaders initially feared.
“In many ways, well-designed digital systems are actually easier to manage than making a phone call,” Van Oyen says. “We’ve even had several clinics remark that elderly patients in their eighties and nineties can independently manage online booking.”
Addressing Burnout Through Operational Change
Administrative overload remains one of the leading drivers of physician burnout. Studies consistently link excessive documentation and paperwork to stress, reduced job satisfaction, and early retirement.
In fact, the CMA report notes that one-quarter of physicians are considering leaving medicine or retiring early within the next two years due to administrative pressures.
While policy reforms can help address structural challenges, Van Oyen believes operational improvements may deliver faster and more predictable results.
“Policy and fee controls can have an impact,” he says. “But if administrative burden is the problem, we should tackle this directly rather than using policy instruments that are inherently more difficult to implement and control.”
As healthcare systems continue to face workforce shortages and rising patient demand, reducing administrative workload may become a critical strategy for preserving physician capacity.
By automating routine tasks and modernizing clinical operations, healthcare organizations may be able to reclaim one of their most valuable resources: physicians’ time with patients.
For more information, visit cortico.health.
Image Source: ID 134556120 ©
Wrightstudio | Dreamstime.com
Daniel Casciato is a seasoned healthcare writer, publisher, and product reviewer with two decades of experience. He founded Healthcare Business Today to deliver timely insights on healthcare trends, technology, and innovation. His bylines have appeared in outlets such as Cleveland Clinic’s Health Essentials, MedEsthetics Magazine, EMS World, Pittsburgh Business Times, Post-Gazette, Providence Journal, Western PA Healthcare News, and he has written for clients like the American Heart Association, Google Earth, and Southwest Airlines. Through Healthcare Business Today, Daniel continues to inform and inspire professionals across the healthcare landscape.
