5 Surprising Facts about Doctor’s Visits

In the United States, a patient will spend, on average, no more than 22 mintues per appointment in their doctor’s examination room (8-11 of those minutes actually with the doctor).¹ This leaves patients with more than an hour (62 minutes) to spend in the office waiting and filling out paperwork.

On top of that 84 minutes, the average patient travels 37 minutes to/from the appointment.² None of these studies factored in the time expended to call and setup appointments or make extra visits to labs or other providers in preparation for the actual appointment!

That is a surprising amount of information, let’s look at it visually:

…time to get an appointment to see a physician has been slowly ticking upward the past decade, reaching an all-time high of 24 days this year.
2017 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times³

You are one of 2500 or more patients your doctor sees every year. ⁴

Take a deep breath and let that statistic sink in for a moment.

If you are spending less than 11 minutes per visit with your doctor, and you are one of up to 2500 of his/her patients, how much value are you getting out of that relationship?

Lastly, you have probably read that the United States spends more per capita for healthcare than any other nation yet ranks a dismal 11th overall for healthcare outcomes.⁵ Outcomes are an overall measurement of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives. Read the full study here from The Commonwealth Fund.

Also, remember that healthcare means YOU. We can become numb to reading statistics and studies, but in the end, it is about you and your health that matters.

I believe most people prefer to be healthy. And I also believe that most people do not enjoy making and attending doctor’s visits. I was part of the merry-go-round that is the modern healthcare system and despite best efforts, see the dismal outcomes across the board. I KNOW there is a better way, and thus the core motivation for NowGetWell.com