Insurance forms have been a major burden for physicians, including excessively long requests and different forms from each company. We have been working with the National Insurance Association to share your concerns and advocate for a better process. 

New Standard Disability Form

This week, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association released a new standard disability form. Insurers are moving to the new harmonized disability medical form that can be used to initiate both short- and long-term disability claims, and are progressively retiring their existing company-specific forms. Insurers will accept the new form immediately but recognize that they or some plan sponsors may need up to a year to fully transition to the new form and upload it across all websites. 

You can access the new standardized form here.

What Other Provinces Are Doing

Other provinces have reported the new form can save physicians time, especially when it is integrated into the physician’s EMR and auto-populated where possible with existing information. ​“To simplify by having just one disability form will make it easier for Nova Scotia physicians who complete more than 7,500 disability forms a year for our patients,” explained Dr. Amanda MacDonald Green, Physician Administrative Burden Advisor with Doctors Nova Scotia. 

We are interested in your feedback to ensure this change is an improvement in your practice. Email us at adminbuden@​doctorsmanitoba.​ca.

Further Recommendations

We have also recommended employer and private insurance plans remove physician authorization to access benefits such as massage therapy, something the insurance industry has also recommended. We estimated physicians spend 49,000 hours per year on these requests, and we are hoping they are being phased out. 

Please email us at adminburden@​doctorsmanitoba.​ca if you are still seeing requests to access these benefits, with details of the employer and insurer, so we can follow up to encourage removing this requirement.