The GP Admin Time Problem, and What to Do About It

The Numbers Are Not Good

Research from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners consistently shows that Australian GPs spend between 25 and 35 percent of their working week on tasks that are not direct patient care. For a full-time GP, that equates to roughly one to two full working days per week consumed by documentation, correspondence, form completion, and administrative follow-up.

A 2023 RACGP survey found that over 70 percent of GPs reported working beyond their scheduled hours to complete documentation, with the majority doing so after clinic hours. This “pajama time” (notes written at home after patients have gone) is one of the most consistent contributors to GP burnout in Australia.

Where the Time Actually Goes

Not all admin is created equal. When GPs are asked to break down their non-clinical time, several categories dominate:

• Consultation notes: Writing or dictating SOAP notes for each encounter is the single largest time cost. A 15-minute consultation typically requires 5–8 minutes of documentation.
• Referral letters: Crafting specialist referrals that adequately summarise a patient's history and the reason for referral takes an average of 8–12 minutes per letter.
• Post-consultation forms: Completing forms for Centrelink, WorkCover, DVA, Medicare, insurance companies, employers, and other agencies is time-consuming, repetitive, and carries administrative risk if errors are made.
• Results and inbox management: Reviewing pathology results, radiology reports, and specialist letters requires clinical judgement but is often done in between or after consultations.
• Care plans and health assessments: Medicare-funded care plans (e.g., GP Management Plans, Team Care Arrangements) require structured documentation that is time-intensive to produce from scratch.

The Real Cost: Burnout and Access

The admin burden has two compounding effects. The first is personal: clinicians who consistently work beyond their scheduled hours to complete documentation report higher rates of emotional exhaustion, reduced job satisfaction, and earlier intentions to reduce their scope of practice or leave the profession. GP workforce shortages across regional and rural Australia are partly driven by this dynamic.

The second effect is systemic: every hour a GP spends on documentation is an hour not available for patient care. If the average GP could recover even 30 minutes of clinical time per day through more efficient documentation, the aggregate effect on patient access across the national workforce would be significant.

Practical Steps That Help

The most effective interventions target the highest-volume tasks first:

• AI-assisted consultation notes: Tools that record, transcribe, and draft SOAP notes from the consultation itself can reduce documentation time by 50–70 percent per encounter. At scale, this is the single highest-impact change a GP can make.
• Document templates: Maintaining a library of well-structured templates for common letters (specialist referrals, care plans, medical certificates) reduces blank-page time and improves consistency.
• Auto-populated post-consultation forms: Platforms that can pull information from consultation notes to pre-fill government, insurance, employer, and clinical forms eliminate a significant source of manual data re-entry.
• Workflow batching: Grouping documentation, results review, and correspondence into defined time blocks, rather than scattering them between patients, reduces context-switching costs.

None of these changes are dramatic in isolation. But combined, they represent a realistic path to recovering 60-90 minutes per day for the average GP. Time that can go back to patients, or simply back to living.