The Real Cost of Wasted Waiting Room Time
A recent post called A Hidden Cost of Health Care: Patient Time caught my eye.
Most of us don't see that waiting room time as a cost to us, but it is. In my previous-to-advocacy life, I was a marketer, and when I called on a client, my company charged that client $150 an hour for my time. (No - I didn't get that money! My share was a fraction of that!)
According to the article, that meant that if I traveled to my doctor's location, then waited an average amount of time, then spent time in the exam, then retrieved a prescription, I spent an average of 1.1 hours. My time "cost" to my employer was $165.
Thank that doesn't work the same way for you? Well, it does. For all those hours we spend getting healthcare, our employers are losing our productivity. When they lose our productivity, that impacts their bottom line, and we suffer in the amount we might get in a raise and other benefits. Whether you are making $10 an hour or $100 an hour, it DOES come out of your pocket.
The article takes this calculation to some additional conclusions. The cost of time for men vs women, the cost of time for people over or under age 60, the total cost of time across the population, and others. The numbers are staggering. The cost of time in the United States is $240 billion per year, and that doesn't even get counted when we look at the overall cost of healthcare we hear from politicians.
What can we patients do about that? Very little, I'm afraid.
Yes, we can complain when the wait time is too long. I suppose we can try to choose doctors who practice not far from home or work. We can also call ahead when we have an appointment with a doctor who is notoriously late.
But there are actually two things we can learn from a long wait. One thing we know is that the doctor is busy. If you had a difficult time getting an appointment AND you have to wait, there's a good chance it's because you have a good doctor. If it's too easy to get an appointment quickly, and you don't have to wait long, then it may be an indication that the doctor isn't worth seeing.
The second possible conclusion is that the reason the doctor is late is because he or she is spending extra time with a patient. If you needed extra time, wouldn't you want the doctor to spend it with you, too, regardless of the next appointment time?
If you keep these thoughts in mind while you're waiting, it will make it much easier to judge whether that doctor is truly "costing" you or your employer for the time you spend accessing healthcare.
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Most of the specialists I have tried make patients wait at least 30 min, and it is usually an hour before you only see the doctor for 5 min. A physician would need to be a telepath to give truly good medical care in such a short time. I really hate going to these doctors and avoid them as much as possible. This probably will lead to less than optimal medical care.
I also have one doctor that runs a fairly tight ship. The pratice uses online forms that can be downloaded and completed at home (you get a much more thorough and accurate response) before the visit. If a patient is more than 15 min late, they have to reschedule. The doctors ask a lot of questions to make sure they understand everything happening in a patient’s life in order to give complete medical care. They only schedule in the morning and use the afternoon for open appointments (it’s always busy). I have never had to wait more than 15 minutes in that waiting room, and this practice is the only one I enjoy going to visit.
I can certainly understand the physician’s office getting behind when emergencies happen, yes these things are part of life. What I do not understand is the total disregard everyone in a physician’s practice has for the patient’s time. Not all patients have sick time to make up time lost due to office visits. The very least an office manager can do is inform the patient walking in for an appointment that visits are running behind schedule and how far behind. A patient can then make an informed decision about whether to wait or reschedule. If there is a delay first thing in the morning, telephone calls to scheduled patients would be appropriate so time away from work (and money out of paychecks) would be minimized.
I disagree with the premise. Most of my doctor visits are not about some exotic condition that require an unlimited amount of diagnosis time and thereby create backups. I submit that most practitioners are merely trying to maximize their billable time by having a good pool of patients waiting at all times.
(Hey — if my clients would be willing to do this, I’d engage in the practice too!)
When I’ve got the same flu symptoms that 95% of the populace have, or need a prescription refill for something I’ve taken for years, or have a small cut or bruise — any first-year intern should be able to predict the “book time” that the visit should take.
Then, just like an auto mechanic, sometimes you do a little better and sometimes you do a little worse. And if you always take longer — you ramp down the number of Pontiacs (or patients) that you agree to service in a day.
Yes, if you’re Dr. House and breaking new diagnostic ground every week, maybe you need extra time. But until my doctor’s nurse keeps asking ME what medications I’m on (when THEY are the ones prescribing them) I won’t be willing to accept that they couldn’t do better.
Dick – I absolutely hear you loud and clear. Especially because the day after I wrote that blog post, I waited for 1 hour and 55 minutes to see a doctor that it took me three months to even get an appointment with.
Do I think doctors should, in general, manage their time better? Yes I do, no question about it. Do they have any incentive to do that? No. None whatsoever. The good ones have huge patient loads, and they can never anticipate what their day will bring.
Which is why I posted the way I did. We patients are in no position to demand they do anything different, nor are we in any position to change it ourselves.
I absolutely agree with both you, and with James who posted before you. But until someone can give me a good, concrete idea about how we can insist doctors do something different, better to look at it a whole different way (like calling ahead or taking something to do with you. I actually had my laptop with me for that almost-2-hour wait.)
One more thing. Healthcare reform is only going to make the situation — waiting forever to get an appointment AND waiting in the waiting room when you get there — far worse.
Thanks for posting….
Trisha Torrey
Trisha,
What an insightful article! You are absolutely right.
Luckily, there is something that we patients can do: ask our doctors to use technology to eliminate waiting in the waiting room. There is technology today that can eliminate waiting in waiting rooms altogether, using cell phones and virtual lines to notify patients when they will be seen, keep them informed throughout the wait, and let them push themselves back automatically if needed, automatically adjusting wait times for everyone else. The technology is called virtual queueing, or mobile queueing, and it gives patients the freedom to remain productive while they wait. In addition to returning the wait time to their rightful owners and avoiding the waste you describe, virtual queueing greatly reduces waiting room contagion.