There is a national and international shortage of qualified medical providers. What this often means is that it takes a really long time between the time you book an appointment until you actually get to see the doctor. According to a study by the Merritt Hawkins Group, the average wait time to see a primary care physician is 24 days, an increase of 30% since the last time the study was performed. That's almost a month. There are some tips that you can use to possibly reduce the time it takes to see your doctor. Below are some helpful hints based on my 15 years of experience working in two large academic physician practice organizations.
- Book online. The first thing that you need to do is check online to see if the physician has a website that allows you to book an appointment directly. Some physician office may offer a link that said something along the line of "schedule an appointment online", but it is really an intake form that you fill out and hope that someone call you back. You have to make sure you understand the distinction.
Look into zocdoc.com. Zocdoc is a commercial website that you can book your doctor and dentist appointments directly. It's pretty easy to make an appointment on zocdoc. After you create an account, you select the symptom/s that you have, put in your zip code, and decide if you want to include your insurance carrier information. I highly recommend that you include your insurance information. The last thing that you want to do is to show up in the doctor's office only to be told that the office doesn't accept your insurance plan. When you begin your search, the site will show a list of physicians, sorted by an internal algorithm. Sometimes, they will highlight new doctors on top of the list and other time, the physicians closest to you. In actuality, over time, physicians with the most available time and the best rating will appear higher on the search result. Because the physician has put his/her schedule online, you will likely find the exact date and time that fit your schedule. Once the appointment is made on zocdoc and confirmed by the doctor's office, the physician will likely send you certain forms to pre-fill, such as insurance coverage and medical history. This is helpful because it will save you a lot of wait time when you arrive at the office. Complete those forms and show up at the appointment date and time. After you complete your visit, you will be able to log back into the zocdoc website and rate your physicians on their overall score, wait time, and bedside manners. The rating stuff can be a powerful incentive for physicians to be more patient centric. - Ask to see another physician in the group. In a large medical group, there is likely a mix of new and senior physicians. Everyone will want to see the more senior physician. At the same time, he/she will likely have less availability: other time commitment, a busy practice, lots of patients, winding down to retirement, etc. A more junior physician who is ramping up will have a smaller patient panel. Therefore, it may be easier for the doctor to accommodate your schedule and see you.
- Join a wait list. Any physician practice has to deal with patients who scheduled an appointment only to cancel the slot prior to their appointment date and time. I've seen some practices with 30% cancellation rate (1 out 3 patients called to cancel) and as high as 50% (1 out 2 patients called to cancel). From a business perspective, the physician office deals with the issue by double-booking. Double booking is a process where the scheduler will put two appointments in the same time slot. You know that the physician can't be in two places at the same time. But with experience and intuition, many physician offices know that patients will cancel so if they've scheduled two patients in one slot, and one cancelled, effectively they're seeing one patient. Where this becomes problematic is when both patients show up to the office. The physician has to make a choice as to who will be seen first and who will be seen later. In the event that there is a chain reaction and the next patients (who were also double-booked showed up at the office), then it will create a huge downstream effect that causes everyone to be late...but I digress. Not every physician practice tries to overbook every time. So to catch those times when a patient cancelled, you leave your name and information with the scheduler so that if another patient call to cancel an appointment and it's a desired slot for you, the scheduler can call you and offer you that slot. Both parties are happy. The physician office gets a paying patient and you get seen earlier than expected.
- See other type of medical providers. Not every ailment or appointment requires the attention of a medical doctor. If you're going into the doctor's office for chronic disease maintenance, setting time with an advanced practice provider will get you in faster. It's also likely that you get to spend more time with the provider and resolve your questions and concerns. Medication refill is another excellent opportunity where you don't necessarily need to see the physician. Your physician provides oversight to the nurse practitioner or advanced practice provider, and it would make sense to make an appointment specifically to see the doctor once every so often to maintain the relationship.
- Be courteous to the front desk receptionists, medical assistants, schedulers, and nurses. After you've made that first visit to the physician's office, you will likely return for future visits if this is for a chronic condition or the physician is your primary care provider. How you treat the staff will go a long way to getting your next appointment. Most healthcare administrators are not going to jeopardize your help over petty issues. However, they may not go out of their way to find an earlier appointment if you have been such a pain in the butt. Or if you have not been too nice, they may not want to call you to offer a slot that another patient had called to cancel.
- Call the office the morning of. Usually the best time to call is around 9:30AM to 10:00AM. By this time, the office has reviewed the emails and phone calls of the same day cancellations. If you have flexibility and can go into the office ad hoc, you can snatch an appointment that day and not have to wait three weeks to be seen.
- Look for first appointment of the day. There are many reasons why a physician can run behind, including overbooking and complexity of individual cases. To avoid having a three hours wait because your doctor is behind schedule, check with the scheduler what is the first appointment of the morning or afternoon session and book yourself into that slot. You'll less likely to be affected by the domino effect of delay. Be careful about booking afternoon appointments because sometimes doctors see patients throughout the day and the delay may have spilled over from the morning session and your 1PM appointment may be delayed as well even though you were the first patient on the list for the afternoon.
- Use the electronic medical record system. Most big physician practices likely will have an electronic medical record (EMR) system. EMR system allows you to log on and view your medical history, make payments, refill prescriptions, interact with your physician via secured written communication, as well as to schedule future appointments. You may find that with the information you are receiving directly on the EHR and the online communication, that you don't need to go into the office. I think that as the health care industry continues to evolves, the delivery of healthcare will shift more to this model of care.
- Ask for same day clinic. In many larger healthcare organizations, to differentiate themselves from the rest of the competition, the doctors may offer additional services such walk-in clinic. You may not be able to take care all of your problems in the same day, it's potentially a way for you to address the most critical issues with the provider. Walk-in clinics are best for primary care related issues. If you have an emergency issue, consider going to the emergency room immediately instead of going to the same day clinic. The level of expertise and service may not be the same.
- Switch doctor. If you find that over time, it is impossible to make an appointment with your doctor, consider switching to a new provider. Maybe life and other commitment have resulted in the physician reducing the number of days of the week that he's seeing patients. By pure math, a reduction in number of days that the doctor is seeing patients against the same group of patients, the patient wait time will increase. You have to decide how many days is one day too long to wait. Go back to #1 and find a new doctor or call around for a referral. The paradigm has shifted and more physicians are taking patient satisfaction more seriously. Therefore you should make an effort to vote with your feet.
I hope this list is helpful as you are trying to reach your doctor more timely. I am going to leave you with this last tip, which would be 10 + 1 ways. If you know someone who works in the health system where you're trying to make an appointment, check to see if that person can make the appointment for you by reaching out directly to the practice in that organization. Physicians can sometimes "squeeze" you into the schedule or see you outside of their clinic hours. This last item is more about who you know so it doesn't apply to everyone.
Thanks for reading!