While some Manitoba patients wait over a year for specialist appointments, doctors are still sending their referrals the same way hospitals did in 1985: by fax machine. Over one million of them, every year. This massive reliance on fax technology has created a healthcare bottleneck that’s drawing attention from doctor groups pushing for electronic alternatives.
According to a CTV News report from August 2025, Manitoba has one of the worst levels of electronic information sharing between healthcare providers in Canada. The result is a healthcare system where the vast majority of physician-to-physician communication still happens the same way it did decades ago – through fax machines that require manual processing at every step.
The Hidden Cost of Fax-Based Healthcare
Dr. Nichelle Desilets, President of Doctors Manitoba, highlighted the real cost of this system: every hour specialists spend processing faxed referrals is an hour they can’t see patients. “If the administrative burden of processing those referrals in a very analog way is decreased,” she explained, “then presumably that means better work balance for the receiving physician and more time that patients could be seen instead of having a specialist sitting at a desk doing that processing.”
Why Fax Persists in Manitoba Healthcare
The current system creates a chain of problems. When a family doctor sends one of the 2,740 daily specialist referrals by fax, it arrives at a central intake where staff must manually enter information into computer systems. These faxed requests often get backlogged, with each sheet of paper representing a patient who might wait months or even a year for care.
Why do fax machines persist? Manitoba’s healthcare computer systems simply can’t share information securely between doctors. Unlike other provinces that invested in electronic health systems, Manitoba’s infrastructure relies on fax because it creates automatic documentation trails, works with existing equipment, and meets legal requirements without expensive upgrades even though modern services now let healthcare providers send faxes from computers without maintaining physical machines.
The Path Forward
Doctors Manitoba hopes to convince the provincial government to adopt electronic systems at a healthcare summit this fall. The challenge isn’t just technology – it’s getting all healthcare organizations to agree on and pay for compatible systems that meet strict privacy regulations.
For Manitoba patients, the irony is stark: in 2025, the same technology that revolutionized medical communication decades ago now stands between them and timely care. Until the province invests in modern systems that work across all medical offices, those million annual referrals will keep flowing through machines that haven’t changed since 1985 – while patients continue to wait.