Is the 15 Minute Physician Office Visit Losing Ground?

Use to be that when you visited your doctor you had about 15 minutes on average to make your case, get treated, and get your parking ticket stamped. A new study documents that time now as 9 minutes and 48 seconds. As we’ve written about previously here and here, be prepared to speak quickly and use that time well! Oh, also try not to bring more than 1.9 problems to that visit. Might not get to them. And if you have a psychological problem, you will get, on average, a full 2 more minutes of quality medical time.Anyway,the office visit face time was just an artifact of the study which went on to talk about how doctors use computers during the office visit. Three “styles” of use were observed: (1) the “end user” who only used the computer at the end of a consultation to summarize the consultation; 2) the “continuous user”, who interacted with the computer throughout the consultation; and, 3) the “minimal user” who only used the computer at the end of the consultation mostly to issue prescriptions.I thought of another category. I would call it the “swing user”: the physician who actually never uses the computer during the office visit but keeps one around to play virtual golf for the rest of the hour.

Posted in Healthcare. Tags: , .

One Response to “Is the 15 Minute Physician Office Visit Losing Ground?”

  1. “The Doctor is Always Sitting Behind that Damn Computer.” « ajfortin.com Says:

    [...] introduce computers into the fray of the doctor-patient exchange. With economic pressure already squeezing the patient’s quality time with their doctor, it’s not surprising that there might be some jealousy over the new [...]

Leave a Reply