should doctors be forced to treat patients promptly?

New regulations to reduce wait times for medical care in California are due to take effect next year. Under the proposal, primary care doctors employed by HMOs are required to see patients within 10 days of the appointment request, and specialists must see patients within 15 days. Telephone calls must be returned within 30 minutes and patients needing urgent care have to be seen within 48 hours…In San Diego, patients wait an average of more than 3 weeks for a routine physical. In Los Angeles, the average approaches 2 months

this will be very interesting to see how this will turn out.  it can take anywhere between 1-3 months to see a doctor.  sometimes more for a specialist.   this is because the typical patient panel of a doctor is 1500-3000 patients.  more patients means more appointments will be necessary to meet the patient demand.  doctors typically see 20-30 patients a day at 15 minutes a patient and this is with the 1-3 month waiting time to get an appointment.  how do you manage your schedule if you have to see them within 10 days?

there may not be enough hours in the day to meet this new demand of appointment times.  the true nature of the shortage of primary care is going to be revealed here i believe.

it could be a good thing though.  it may inspire more reform to keep/get more doctors to go into primary care.  it may also help lessen the burden of emergency rooms.  we’ll see.

see dr. jay parkinson’s thoughts on the matter, here.

ps – i do not believe this will be a problem for doctors with a small patient panel, 1000 or less patients, like those who practice ideal medical practices, concierge medicine, etc.  these types of practices guarantee you to see a doctor within 24 hours to 48 hours.

pps – the only way that i can see, to see patients in a timely manner is if u dont have alot of patients.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 1:35 pm and is filed under modern practice management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.