Scotiabank’s Jascha Jabes says clinics are investing in technology and planned ownership transitions to grow without burning out staff
Healthcare practices across Canada are investing in technology and planning for ownership transitions to handle more patients, not cutting staff to do it. That is the picture emerging from Scotiabank’s small business listening sessions with physicians, dentists, veterinarians and other practice owners nationwide, shared with Canadian Occupational Safety ahead of Small Business Month in October 2026. Jascha Jabes, vice-president of business banking distribution at Scotiabank, who leads roughly 900 advisors serving small business clients nationally, including dedicated healthcare, professional and franchise banking teams, said the findings challenge a common assumption about how practices are managing that growth.
Technology is filling the gaps, not cutting jobs
Jabes told Canadian Occupational Safety the sessions spanned physicians, dentists and veterinarians in multiple Canadian markets, exploring how practices are using artificial intelligence (AI) and digital tools as patient demand grows. Adoption levels vary widely, from physicians using AI for note-taking to practices eliminating entire administrative processes, but Jabes pushed back on the idea that clinics are trying to reduce staff.
“I think the value of strong staff for clinic owners is actually disproportionate,” he said. “Those folks are actually a competitive advantage for a lot of these professionals. What they want to do is make those people more efficient, so that they are actually retained in the business.”
He pointed to appointment booking as a concrete example of where technology is changing the administrative workload without eliminating the role. “The most efficient clinics still have a human balancing the reality of what the flow of a day looks like, understanding the calendar and the realities and the challenges facing a physician in a specific market,” Jabes said. That dynamic echoes findings from a recent survey of Canadian safety leaders on artificial intelligence adoption, which found AI use in occupational health and safety practice still lags behind broader workplace adoption, even as individual sectors like healthcare administration move faster.
Burnout isn’t confined to the exam room
Asked directly whether practitioners described burnout among their workforce, Jabes didn’t hesitate. “I actually think burnout among the professionals themselves is also a story, and there’s been some research in the medical field,” he said. “I happen to be married to a physician, and let me tell you, it’s a point of conversation in our household. I think it’s a very real phenomenon, both among healthcare and healthcare-adjacent professionals. But I think their staffs absolutely feel it.”
Jabes said that strain is often tied to underinvestment in technology rather than workload alone, a pattern that echoes moral injury’s rise as a hidden psychosocial risk for safety leaders. “Those that have adopted technology to assist the office managers, the administrative assistants, are seeing much more throughput,” he said. “It’s actually a retention tool, because the staff themselves become technologically savvy.”
Succession planning becomes a continuity question
Scotiabank’s sessions also surfaced a wave of small business ownership transitions coming over the next decade, something Jabes called “a sleeper issue in Canadian public policy.” He said unplanned transitions put staff retention, client continuity and workplace culture at risk in ways that go beyond the tax questions most owners focus on first.
“The most successful transitions are planned,” he said. “They can be planned years in advance. Those that are not, traditionally, are more of a roll of the dice.” Jabes credited the federal government’s employee-owned trust framework with expanding options for staff to take on ownership when founders exit, and said banks, accountants and lawyers each have a role in keeping culture and continuity intact through the handoff.
The stakes are familiar to smaller employers generally. Ontario’s workplace safety incentive program for small businesses is cutting injuries among the firms that join it, five years in, but still reaches only a fraction of eligible employers, according to a recent evaluation. For a healthcare practice changing hands, that same reach gap can mean formal safety and training practices get lost in the handoff unless an owner plans for it directly.
Jabes said the broader message from Scotiabank’s conversations is that healthcare practice owners aren’t choosing between growth and their teams. “Stick with it,” he said, describing it as his first piece of advice to owners managing both. His second: call someone, whether an accountant, lawyer or advisor who has guided a similar transition before, rather than navigating it alone. Businesses with one to 19 employees represent more than 90 per cent of all employer businesses in Canada and employ 4.5 million people, according to Statistics Canada, a scale Jabes said makes the sector’s workforce decisions a national, not just local, concern.
