Pacific Blue Cross survey finds women manage invisible administrative burden that spills into work hours, CEO Sarah Hoffman says
A new national study from Blue Cross suggests the hidden labour behind women's healthcare in Canada is spilling into the workday, and Sarah Hoffman, president and CEO of Pacific Blue Cross, says employers are only beginning to grasp what that means for their workforce.
The 2026 Blue Cross Women's Health Study, based on an online survey of 2,045 adult Canadians conducted in March 2026 by independent research firm Research + Knowledge = Insight, found that 53 per cent of women have experienced a chronic illness and that 71 per cent of those living with one must repeat their full health history to providers more than once a year, an average of three times.
"Women living with chronic conditions are finding it a little bit more burdensome to have to navigate the system," Hoffman said. "Younger women are also approaching the system slightly differently, and they're finding that women in general are having to prepare quite heavily for their healthcare experiences and manage their healthcare journeys along with their healthcare providers."
Trust shapes whether care feels supportive
The study found that most Canadians report positive healthcare experiences, with 71 per cent describing their doctor as supportive and 88 per cent expecting appointments to go well. But that top-line satisfaction sits alongside friction: 64 per cent of women say there are health topics they find difficult to raise with a doctor.
Doctor support turned out to be the strongest predictor of a positive experience in the data, ahead of age, gender or geography. Canadians who described their physician as supportive were nearly four times more likely to expect a positive appointment than those who felt unsupported, and were far more likely to report their symptoms accurately.
The gap was sharpest among Gen Z. While 82 per cent of Gen Z men said they feel supported by their doctor, only 66 per cent of Gen Z women said the same, a 16-point gap the study found was roughly three times larger than the equivalent gap among Millennials.
"The data is really telling us that those younger women are entering their healthcare conversations with a little bit more hesitation and a little less reassurance than their male counterparts," Hoffman said. "It does show that young women are a little bit more likely to report concerns about things like dismissal and judgment and feeling the need to prove themselves in a healthcare environment."
A cost that follows women into the workplace
Hoffman described the burden as extending beyond a woman's own care. "Women have to navigate not only their own healthcare journey, but their family members and the folks that they care about as well," she said. "The burden of doing that absolutely might pop up during the workday while women are mentally preparing or even physically preparing for some of the work that needs to be done."
To put it more directly, Hoffman said women are "acting as project managers of their own care, shouldering the invisible labour of coordinating between providers, retelling their medical history and advocating to be heard."
That framing has parallels to why workplace wellbeing is now treated as a safety standard elsewhere in occupational health circles, where unmanaged administrative and psychological load, not just physical hazard, is increasingly framed as an employer responsibility rather than a personal one.
Benefit design helps, but isn't the whole answer
Asked what employers can do, Hoffman pointed to plan design that reflects a workforce's actual demographics, citing menopause and perimenopause coverage as a growing area of discussion "because it affects women in midlife who are obviously in the height of their careers." She also flagged fertility, adoption and surrogacy benefits as ways employers can supplement public coverage. In British Columbia, she noted, the province funds one fertility cycle, and supplemental plans can cover additional ones.
But Hoffman was clear that coverage alone isn't sufficient. "It's incredibly beneficial, but it's only part of the process," she said. "The other part of that process is enabling women to build rapport, trust and relationships with their care providers."
For younger women specifically, she suggested a more direct intervention: helping employees prepare for difficult conversations. "An example might be, for some of those younger women, making sure that we give them appropriate scripts for having some of those conversations with their care providers that could feel uncomfortable," she said, describing it as something employers could fold into benefit plan management.
The theme echoes discussions expected at psychological hazards being examined at October's Women in Safety Summit, part of COS Live 2026, where sessions are set to explore how safety leaders build the business case for psychological health rather than routing it entirely to human resources.
The business case for CEOs
Asked what she'd tell a fellow chief executive who hasn't thought seriously about the invisible labour side of women's healthcare, Hoffman framed it as a retention issue as much as a health one. "Women in the workplace add incredible value," she said. "Making sure that we keep women who we have invested in through training and development, and having them be highly productive and functioning members of our workforce," requires benefit plans that account for how women's careers actually unfold, from parental leave to midlife health conditions. "Otherwise, the cost of turnover and the replacement of staff is something that would have to be assessed by the employers themselves."
That calculus sits alongside a broader push already underway in Canadian workplaces, reflected in this year's list of top women in safety leaders, where psychological health and systems-level retention strategy have become recurring themes.
Hoffman's overall takeaway from the research was measured. "Canadians aren't losing faith in the healthcare system," she said. "We're just getting more insight into how we can continue to support it, and making sure that we provide as much opportunity to focus on the areas that we can add value in helping to build trust and relationships with care providers, to help women into the future manage their healthcare needs."
