Tag Archives: doctor visits

NY Times: A Doctor’s Guide to A Good Appointment

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NY Times: A Doctor’s Guide to A Good Appointment

An excerpt:

[Choosing a doctor], You can glance at these online ratings sites, but be sure to take them with an enormous grain of salt…I recommend looking for:

  • A doctor who takes his or her time talking with you, as opposed to making you feel like you’re at a drive-through fast-food joint. 
  • A doctor who engages his or her patients in decision-making, as opposed to simply rattling off a to-do list. 
  • A doctor who you can get in touch with on the phone or through secure email.

You should also check with your insurance company — find out which doctors are in network and conveniently located. ..

If you are looking for a specialist to do a particular procedure (like hip replacement, cataract surgery, a CT-guided biopsy or heart valve surgery), look for a physician who does lots of them…

Timing: If you can schedule yourself to be the first or second visit of the day, you’ll have a better chance at being seen at your scheduled time. Don’t plan your visit when you have to something critical right afterward. 

My take: This is a useful commentary.  It also makes recommendations on finding out how much it will cost (sometimes by calling your insurance company).  Other points I would make:

  • Bring important information with you, like current medications (name, and dose or just bring the prescription container itself), previous test results and growth information
  • Bring a [short] list of questions
  • If you have a flexible schedule, in addition to the first appointments of the day, often the first appointment after lunch has a shorter wait time, particularly for physicians who tend to run late on appointments

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How Much Does a Doctor Visit Cost a Patient?

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Opportunity Costs of Doctor Visits -YouTube Video

From the Boston Globe:

The study estimates that the typical visit to a doctor consumes 121 minutes of the patient’s time — 37 minutes in travel, 64 minutes waiting for care or filling out forms, and only 20 minutes face to face with the physician.

Based on the average sum a person could earn if working during that time, the researchers figure, it costs patients $43 in lost time for each medical visit — more than the average out-of-pocket cost for the care itself, which is about $32.

Mehrotra’s team drew their results from three national surveys, chiefly the 2003-2010 American Time Use Survey, administered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The survey asked randomly selected respondents to recall what they did from 4 a.m. on the previous day until 4 a.m. on the day of the survey. The researchers examined the experiences of the 3,927 respondents who had sought medical care during that 24-hour period.

The initial study: Opportunity Costs of Ambulatory Medical Care in the United States Kristin N. Ray, MD, MS; Amalavoyal V. Chari, PhD; John Engberg, PhD; Marnie Bertolet, PhD; and Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MPH.  Published in American Journal of Managed Care (August 2015)

An Apple a Day …

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According to research, published in JAMA Internal Medicine (April 1st edition –done for fun and “is very tongue in cheek”) an apple a day does not “keep the doctor away.”

Here’s an excerpt from USA Today summary:

At first glance, data on 8,728 U.S. adults looked like it might uphold the saying: The 9% who ate at least one small apple daily were less likely to visit doctors several times a year….They adjusted their statistics to account for ways other than apple-eating that “apple eaters might be very different from everyone else,” Davis says. For example, they found apple lovers were less likely to smoke, were more educated and were less likely to be white than the 91% of the population eating less than an apple a day.

After adjusting for those factors, they found daily apple-eaters were just as likely as otherwise similar individuals to go to doctors…Other studies have found numerous possible health benefits associated with apple consumption, including weight loss, reduced cancer risk and improved cardiovascular health.