The root cause of this is that the billing system (which varies by Province) by which doctors actually get paid is a fee-for-service model. That means the system incentivizes doctors to see patients by only allowing them to get paid for actually seeing the patient: Give someone a vaccine? $15. Family doctor routine checkup? $34.
The system is set up to reward the kind of doctor who sees 6 patients an hour and is on their third marriage because they're at the clinic for 12 hours a day. Those are the family docs who are making high six figures, which is incidentally the opposite of what's good for the patient. You can't have meaningful interactions with a family doctor in ten minute visits, but the billing codes (in BC and Ontario at least) are set up to financially penalize doctors who take 45 minutes with a single patient to really make sure they get to the bottom of things.
Anyway, the follow-on effect is that doctors generally don't get paid to do their legally-required paperwork and a litany of other things, so we've arrived at the present where family doctors are using "AI" shitware of questionable quality made by silicon valley techbros of questionable quality, and relying on that software to ensure the accuracy (and privacy!) of patients' health data because they are so overworked and underpaid that there's a constant brain drain of good family doctors leaving family medicine for specialized sub-disciplines or leaving Canada to seek greener (pun only partially intended) pastures where the pay is better south of 49.
tl;dr the whole situation's fucked and the fact they're resorting to "AI" garbage should be a source of profound shame, not jubilation
"Provincial health officials announced the changes during a Monday news event, saying physicians will be able to stop participating in the current fee-for-service system in early 2023."
"The provincial government says a full-time family doctor will be paid about $385,000 a year, up from the current $250,000, under the new three-year Physician Master Agreement reached with Doctors of B.C. last week."
Many family doctors in Ontario don't use the fee for service model.
Instead, they have a roster of patients and they recieve a flat fee every year for having a patient on their roster.
I'm not sure it changes any of the downsides you mentioned, though, since the yearly flat fee is quite low so doctors still need to minimize the time spent per patient.
Here in BC it's just a lack of political will because physicians are expensive, governments are broke after COVID, and so instead of fixing the system (which would cost money), the absolute morons in the health ministry have decided that "nurse practitioners" are 1:1 substitutes for family doctors, despite the fact that they don't go to medical school and thus don't receive any diagnostic training whatsoever.
It'll right itself eventually, but I'm not sure what the actuarial tables say about whether I'll be around to see it or not.
The best you can do is take care of yourself. Exercise, eat healthy, don’t do overly risky activities.
It really is a shame the state we are left in BC. If it was more accessible I would go back to school to become a doctor but the MD programs are far and few between and not really structured for someone with kids.
I do meet the entrance criteria for the UBC med program but Im not going to uproot my family back to Vancouver.
The newly proposed increased federal tax share from 1/2 to 2/3 on corporate capital gains will also negatively effect many doctors in Canada as well since many of them run their own companies and invest some of the income for desirable tax advantages.
Don't do it. I'm married to a doctor who started in family medicine and bailed out because the work-life balance was awful and the money was mediocre, but she wasn't willing to see 6 patients an hour.
That's just what they tell voters in order to get away with cutting the thing government exists to provide in the first place, all to lower taxes for some weird political-religious ideals.
If the government can't basics like health care, that government has no reason to exist.
Not saying your overall message is wrong about your region but... My wife is an NP and most of her courses and clinical time were focused on diagnostic techniques.
The problems you point out seem valid, but are you sure they are directly relevant to the core issue this AI is solving? That skilled data entry is critical to medical operations and is very effort intensive.
I feel like doctor incentivization and silicon valley's predatory corporate culture aside, this problem does need to be solved if we want to avoid wasting doctors' precious work-hours
>I feel like doctor incentivization and silicon valley's predatory corporate culture aside, this problem does need to be solved if we want to avoid wasting doctors' precious work-hours
Your comment presupposes that time spent on data entry is a waste. Relevant, cogent notes written by a human are infinitely better than whatever the rent-seeking intermediary between the physician and OpenAI shits out. The problem is not technical in nature; it's a misalignment of incentives.
The solution is to pay physicians for time they spend charting, and then the time is no longer "wasted".
The system is set up to reward the kind of doctor who sees 6 patients an hour and is on their third marriage because they're at the clinic for 12 hours a day. Those are the family docs who are making high six figures, which is incidentally the opposite of what's good for the patient. You can't have meaningful interactions with a family doctor in ten minute visits, but the billing codes (in BC and Ontario at least) are set up to financially penalize doctors who take 45 minutes with a single patient to really make sure they get to the bottom of things.
Anyway, the follow-on effect is that doctors generally don't get paid to do their legally-required paperwork and a litany of other things, so we've arrived at the present where family doctors are using "AI" shitware of questionable quality made by silicon valley techbros of questionable quality, and relying on that software to ensure the accuracy (and privacy!) of patients' health data because they are so overworked and underpaid that there's a constant brain drain of good family doctors leaving family medicine for specialized sub-disciplines or leaving Canada to seek greener (pun only partially intended) pastures where the pay is better south of 49.
tl;dr the whole situation's fucked and the fact they're resorting to "AI" garbage should be a source of profound shame, not jubilation