Long Waits at the Doctor's Office Disrespect Patients

KevinMD.com blog posted an article on "Long Waits at the Doctor's Office Disrespect Patients" in the article they explained various reasons why you are kept waiting and different ideas as to what you could do about your wait issues.

The article stated:

• The average time patients spend waiting in 24 minutes
• The average wait times for specialists are longer than general practitioners.

Possible reasons why you are kept waiting:

• The office overbooks & schedules multiple appointments at the same time
• The doctor could have to go to a different office and be running late
• The doctor could be late

What the practice could do for you:

• Call or email if they are running late
• Give you a paging device (similar to restaurants)
• Inform you about the situation at check-in

What you can do:

• Book the first appointment of the day
• Call ahead and ask how the day is going before your scheduled appointment time
• Ask the office staff how long the wait will be
• Explain your frustration to the office staff/doctor
• Find a new doctor

For the full article, please click the following link: Long Waits at the Doctor's Office Disrespect Patients

For additional billing and coding resources, please click the following link: Medical Reimbursement Billing and Coding Resources Page

Reducing Patient Wait Times

Health Leaders Media published an article on "How Physicians Can Reduce Patient Wait Times"  The basis of the article was a survey that was administered by Merritt Hawkins & Associates on patient wait times.  The survey studied the wait times for the following specialties: Family Practice, Cardiology, Dermatology, and Orthopedic Surgery.

Family Practice:
Longest Wait Time: 99.6 Days, Shortest Wait Time: 2.47 Days, Average Wait Time: 20.3 Days

Cardiology:
Longest Wait Time: 104.4 Days, Shortest Wait Time: 3.4 Days, Average Wait Time: 22.1 Days

Dermatology:
Longest Wait Time: 98.7 Days, Shortest Wait Time: 2.5 Days, Average Wait Time: 27.5 Days

Orthopedic Surgery:
Longest Wait Time: 59.9 Days, Shortest Wait Time: 2.9 Days, Average Wait Time: 16.8 Days

The article suggested that the following take place to address the wait times:

• Adopt modern tools (for example: EHR)
• Use creative and innovative scheduling models
• Have office hours that better accommodate patient's needs
• Look at quality measurements (such as patient demographics)

Some other solutions the article suggested were: 

• e-messaging, e-visits and groups clinics
• pilot programs - have one physician go around and teach the others to use new protocols.

To download the full article, please click here: How Physicians Can Reduce Patient Wait Times

For additional resources by specialty, please click the following link: Medical Reimbursement Resources Page