Physicians call for end to sick notes, better IT

VICTORIA – The BC College of Family Physicians is calling on the provincial government to follow through on its pledge to ban the requirement of doctors’ notes to miss work. Jennifer Lush (pictured), a family doctor and vice president of B.C. College of Family Physicians, says physicians are burned out and overwhelmed with administrative work.

Premier David Eby campaigned on eliminating doctor’s notes in 2024, something that was suggested by provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry two years prior. “But yet, we as family physicians are still being asked to produce sick notes,” Dr. Lush said.

“Right now, the onus is on employees to produce the sick note or else they’re not able to return to work. That puts them in an unfair position. It creates an unnecessary administrative burden for family doctors. “And this is all despite everybody agreeing getting rid of sick notes is a good idea.”

Dr. Lush says doctors B.C., on average, have at least one appointment per week related to a doctors note, time that could be used in a much better way.

“If you add up 7,000 family physicians across the province, even if it’s one visit a week that’s being misused to complete paperwork, that’s 7,000 patients that could have been seen that week.”

The backlog means anyone with a family doctor has to wait longer and those without a family doctor may have to go to the local hospital’s emergency room.

“That’s just a complete misuse of emergency room services. We have overwhelmed ER’s, ridiculous wait times to see a physician in the emergency room, the last thing they should be doing is having to produce a sick note so that the employee can get back to work,” Dr. Lush says.

Sick notes aren’t the only issue slowing down the system, says Dr. Lush, who cited other needless paperwork and an antiquated electronic medical record system.

“Practically every doctor has a different electronic medical record system, none of which talk to each other, so we’re spending a good part of our day tracking down records from specialists, records from hospitals,” she said.

“The province could work towards getting an efficient province-wide system where all the systems communicate so that any care provider that you see in B.C. would be able to access your chart and your records and care for you appropriately, without needing to spend time tracking down results or maybe duplicating tests that somebody has already done elsewhere,” added Dr. Lush.

The doctors are making the call as a park of Red Tape Awareness Week in B.C. The provincial government told the CBC it is working to eliminate the time spent on doctors’ notes and will have more to say on the issue in the coming months.