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Why Your Doctor Appointment Is So Short
There’s an invisible price tag influencing your doctor visit. But that could be about to change.
If you’ve ever wondered why your doctor lingers with some patients and seemingly whisks others out the door, you probably chalked it up to individuals’ differing medical needs.
That may be true, but there’s another factor: Every patient enters the exam room with an invisible price tag.
“It’s a business,” says Jeff Gorke, managing director of the health care practice consulting firm Stout, “and it’s also about the delivery of quality care.”
Both aspects have gotten more complicated recently.
Today, doctors appointments are brief: about 13 to 16 minutes long, according to 2016 data. Dr. Saul J. Weiner, professor of medicine, pediatrics, and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, recalls how the system used to work. “Especially if you knew a patient well, you could just write afterward something concise like, ‘Patient is doing fine, continue present management,’” he says.
That informality has mostly vanished as more oversight has been implemented. The shift came as a response to what were seen as abuses of the “more care, more money” model of fee-for-service payment, which…
