Ontario family doctor says new AI notetaking saved her job

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

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 Ford government has been so impressed with the technology that it announced a pilot program to allow 150 family physicians to use AI Scribe as part of their practices. The health minister said the early signs were promising but stressed the government would proceed carefully.

What I find fascinating is that doctors are independent contractors but the government appears to be buying their tools to make them more efficient

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

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.