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Canada’s health system needs physician-led innovation.

Millions of Canadians have no regular source of primary care, patients wait months for treatment, and physicians spend nearly a fifth of their week on paperwork. The people who see these problems every day are best placed to fix them. Here is the case, in numbers.

  • 5.8M1

    adults in Canada without a family doctor, nurse practitioner or regular place of primary care

  • 28.6 weeks2

    median wait from a GP referral to treatment

  • 19.8M hours3

    of physician time a year spent on paperwork physicians judge unnecessary

01 — Where the money goes

Nearly $399 billion a year, growing faster than the economy.

Canada will spend an estimated $399 billion on health in 2025, 12.7% of GDP. Spending is forecast to grow 4.2% this year, against 2.6% for the economy as a whole.4

$399B health spending, 2025 (forecast)
  • Hospitals 26.0%
  • Physicians 13.8%
  • Other institutions (mostly long-term care) 13.4%
  • Drugs 13.3%
  • Other professionals (dental, vision, other) 10.9%
  • Other health spending 9.3%
  • Public health 5.6%
  • Capital 4.5%
  • Administration* 3.1%

*CIHI’s “administration” covers only running insurance plans, health ministries and health authorities. Administrative work inside hospitals, clinics and drug programs is counted in those categories.4

Administration, broadly measured

Counted across insurers, hospitals, nursing homes and physicians’ offices, administration took about 1 in every 6 health dollars in Canada.5

  • Canada 17.0%
  • United States 34.2%
Share of national health expenditure, 2017 data.

Canada’s administrative share is half the US level. But it still came to about $551 per person a year spent on administration rather than care: money that better processes and tools could redirect.5

02 — Where the time goes

Nearly a fifth of a physician’s week goes to paperwork.

Physicians report 9.1 hours a week of administrative work, and judge almost half of it unnecessary.

9.1 h of a 49.4-hour week on administration
  • Patient care and other work 40.3 h
  • Necessary administration 4.8 h
  • Unnecessary administration 4.3 h

Average physician week, 2025 survey of 1,924 physicians. The split of administration is our calculation from the reported 47% unnecessary share.3

19.8 million hours a year: the work of 9,093 full-time physicians, lost to unnecessary paperwork.3

  • Family physicians 9.9 h
  • Medical specialists 8.6 h
  • Surgical specialists 8.4 h
Hours a week, 2025.3

  • 46%

    of physicians report high burnout6

  • 90%

    say clinical documentation contributes to burnout3

  • 25%

    are considering leaving medicine or retiring early within two years3

03 — Who goes without

Access depends on where you live, and who you are.

The shortage of physicians is not shared equally. It falls hardest on rural and Northern communities, Indigenous people and the provinces with the fewest doctors.

  • Prince Edward Island 62.6%
  • Northwest Territories 63.9%
  • New Brunswick 65.9%
  • Nunavut 66%
  • Newfoundland and Labrador 70.9%
  • Quebec 72.5%
  • Ontario 88.5%
  • Manitoba 88.8%
Share of adults with a family doctor, nurse practitioner or other regular primary care setting: the six lowest, and the two highest.1

Rural Canada

  • Canadians who live in rural areas 17.8%
  • Physicians who practise in rural areas 7%
Approximate comparison: the census and CIHI define “rural” differently.7,8

Indigenous health

  • Inuit 71.9 yrs
  • First Nations (Registered or Treaty status) 74.0 yrs
  • Métis 80.5 yrs
  • Non-Indigenous 85.0 yrs
Life expectancy at birth, 2016 to 2021. Inuit adults are also far less likely to have a regular health care provider: 54.3%, against 85.7% of non-Indigenous adults.9

  • 2.7 vs 3.9

    practising doctors per 1,000 people in Canada, against the OECD average10

  • 27,344

    family physicians short by 2034 in Health Canada’s base projection11

  • 28.6 weeks

    median wait from GP referral to treatment, up from 9.3 weeks in 19932

04 — Physicians build what lasts

Physician founders reach the top three times as often.

  • Physician-founded: 51 of the top 100
  • Expected from the base rate: 17 (outlined)

“Conventional wisdom says doctors don’t ‘get’ business, but my research shows physicians outperform by 3x in building blockbuster healthcare startups.”

Dr. David Lortscher, dermatologist and founder of Curology12

Of the 100 most valuable US healthcare companies founded in the last 40 years, including Doximity, Gilead, Intuitive Surgical, Oak Street Health and Regeneron, 51 had at least one physician founder. Among recent healthcare startups, only 17% do. Physician-founded companies reached the top tier at three times the expected rate.13,14

The research behind it points the same way: physicians are named on almost 20% of US medical device patents, and their patents shape more later inventions;15 top-ranked hospitals are more likely to be led by physicians.16

The top-100 list covers public and acquired US companies founded 1985–2024; the 17% comes from a separate sample of 200 recent US startups. Both are the author’s own analysis.

05 — What innovation changes

The fixes already work. They need to reach everyone.

Each of these has been put to work and measured in Canada.

  1. 01

    Problem

    Hours lost to documentation

    Who it reaches

    More appointments from the same workforce, where shortages are worst

    Innovation

    AI scribes

    Evidence

    69.5%

    less documentation time in Ontario’s evaluation, and 3 fewer hours a week of after-hours admin for clinicians in the real-world pilot.17

    Across 12,019 clinicians in the national program, about 70% reported a lighter administrative load.18

  2. 02

    Problem

    Long waits for specialist advice

    Who it reaches

    Patients far from specialists, and the people waiting behind them

    Innovation

    eConsult

    Evidence

    65%

    of specialist questions answered without a referral visit in Ontario’s Champlain BASE service, with a median reply in 21 hours.19

  3. 03

    Problem

    Distance from care

    Who it reaches

    Rural, remote and Northern communities, and anyone who can’t take a day off for a visit

    Innovation

    Virtual care

    Evidence

    3.2B km

    of patient travel avoided in Ontario from March 2020 to December 2021, saving patients $569–733 million in travel costs.20

  4. 04

    Problem

    Red tape built into the system

    Who it reaches

    Every patient waiting for a physician’s time

    Innovation

    Process redesign

    Evidence

    425,000+

    hours of physician red tape removed in Nova Scotia since 2022, through 45 changes across 14 departments.3

06 — Your part

Build the system Canadians deserve.

  • Join the network

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  • Lead the work

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    See open positions →

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References

  1. 1. OurCare 2025 survey: provincial and territorial public-use data file, version 1.0. OurCare, MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, Unity Health Toronto. Accessed October 29, 2026. ourcare.ca/survey
  2. 2. Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2025. Fraser Institute. Published December 9, 2025. fraserinstitute.org/…/waiting-your-turn-wait-times-for-…
  3. 3. Losing doctors to desk work: Canadian physicians lose 20 million hours each year to red tape. Canadian Medical Association and Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Published January 26, 2026. Accessed October 29, 2026. digitallibrary.cma.ca/…/2026 Losing doctors to desk wor…
  4. 4. National Health Expenditure Trends, 2025: Data tables, Series A. Canadian Institute for Health Information. Published November 27, 2025. Accessed October 29, 2026. cihi.ca/…/nhex-series-a-2025-en.xlsx
  5. 5. Himmelstein DU, Campbell T, Woolhandler S. Health Care Administrative Costs in the United States and Canada, 2017. Ann Intern Med. 2020;172(2):134-142. doi:10.7326/M19-2818
  6. 6. CMA 2025 National Physician Health Survey. Ipsos for the Canadian Medical Association. Accessed October 29, 2026. ipsos.com/…/CMA 2025 National Physician Health Survey.p…
  7. 7. Population growth in Canada's rural areas, 2016 to 2021. Statistics Canada. Published February 9, 2022. Accessed October 29, 2026. www12.statcan.gc.ca/…/98-200-x2021002-eng.cfm
  8. 8. A profile of physicians in Canada. Canadian Institute for Health Information. Accessed October 29, 2026. cihi.ca/en/a-profile-of-physicians-in-canada
  9. 9. Indigenous health and the call for reconciliation in Canada. Statistics Canada. Published September 23, 2025. Accessed October 29, 2026. statcan.gc.ca/…/8526-indigenous-health-and-call-reconci…
  10. 10. Health at a Glance 2025: Canada country note. OECD. Accessed October 29, 2026. oecd.org/…/41ea57c7-en.pdf
  11. 11. Caring for Canadians: Canada's Future Health Workforce. Health Canada. Published January 30, 2025. Accessed October 29, 2026. canada.ca/…/workforce-education-training-distribution-s…
  12. 12. Lortscher D. Conventional wisdom says doctors don’t “get” business, but my research shows physicians outperform by 3x in building blockbuster healthcare startups. LinkedIn. Accessed October 29, 2026. linkedin.com/…/davidlortschermd_conventional-wisdom-say…
  13. 13. Lortscher D. 100 most valuable healthcare companies of the last 40 years (data for Why Doctors Win). Google Sheets. Accessed October 29, 2026. docs.google.com/…/1EGsfBv5s1BZWbIxA2JZDlUP3ovIEMLsmD0JF…
  14. 14. Lortscher D. Most recent 200 healthcare startups (data for Why Doctors Win). Google Sheets. Accessed October 29, 2026. docs.google.com/…/1DdxlAKeHThjDWAP04yfKI4StekVlpYr5q77u…
  15. 15. Chatterji AK, Fabrizio KR, Mitchell W, Schulman KA. Physician-industry cooperation in the medical device industry. Health Aff (Millwood). 2008;27(6):1532-1543. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.27.6.1532
  16. 16. Goodall AH. Physician-leaders and hospital performance: is there an association? Soc Sci Med. 2011;73(4):535-539. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.06.025
  17. 17. Clinical Evaluation of AI and Automation Technology to Reduce Administrative Burden in Primary Care. WIHV Centre for Digital Health Evaluation for OntarioMD. Published July 31, 2024. Accessed October 29, 2026. ontariomd.ca/…/ai scribe evaluation_final report_vf.pdf
  18. 18. Canada Health Infoway releases results of national AI scribe program demonstrating meaningful benefits for primary care clinicians. Canada Health Infoway. Published June 23, 2026. Accessed October 29, 2026. newswire.ca/…/canada-health-infoway-releases-results-of…
  19. 19. Liddy C, Moroz I, Afkham A, Keely E. Sustainability of a Primary Care-Driven eConsult Service. Ann Fam Med. 2018;16(2):120-126. doi:10.1370/afm.2177
  20. 20. Welk B, McArthur E, Zorzi AP. Association of Virtual Care Expansion With Environmental Sustainability and Reduced Patient Costs During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ontario, Canada. JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(10):e2237545. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.37545

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