Yukon gov't, opposition vie for status as champions of cutting red tape for doctors

Opposing parties in the Yukon jockeyed at the Legislative Assembly this week to be the champion of freeing family doctors from red tape.

The Yukon Party called on the governing Liberals on Tuesday to create a task force dedicated to reducing the administrative burden that doctors have to deal with.

Brad Cathers, the opposition's health critic, said that task force would include representation by doctors and the government. It would identify areas where paperwork could be reduced and then set an action plan for making those changes.

The goal would be to allow doctors to spend more time focusing on their patients while still substantiating their billing claims. 

Cathers said the task force could identify "low-hanging fruit" that could reduce the administrative burden doctors face, "relatively easily." 

Family physician practices are private businesses and the Yukon Party has frequently pointed to research by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) that looked into how much time doctors have lost to unnecessary paperwork.

According to the CFIB, doctors across the country spend more than 18 million hours on these tasks each year, or the equivalent of 55.6 million patient visits.

Cathers said the Yukon should follow the example set by Nova Scotia and Manitoba, whose red tape reduction efforts have been credited with saving doctors thousands of hours.

"The amount of physician hours that they've been able to free up through their exercise, they're quite notable," he said.

The Yukon's minister of health and social services considers Cathers's idea unnecessary because a dedicated forum to discuss easing the administrative burden already exists.

Minister Tracy-Anne McPhee said the Yukon government and the Yukon Medical Association formed the physician payment advisory committee, which is focused on the claims and payment system.

"I think what's important is that we continue our relationship and we continue to talk about these concerns that they have with respect to administrative burden," she said.

McPhee said that committee's work has resulted in tangible improvements such as modifying fee codes in 2023 and allowing doctors to be paid automatically for some services. She said that reduced the number of manual claims by more than 600 per week.

She added that physician claims are being paid within a timeframe that has satisfied the Yukon Medical Association.

"But we're interested in streamlining, modernizing the systems that we have in place. And we are open to all of the conversations and hearing from the physicians about how that can be done. Either through this committee or other ways," she said.