In the October 2018 issue of Medscape Business of Medicine, the question was asked, “How can you practice quality medicine if you’re being asked to see patients every 15 minutes or less?”
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I’m pretty sure the answer is, “you can’t.”
Yet, this is what many doctors are asked to do just to make ends meet. The majority of everyday medicine is, and always will be, a thinking game. It takes time to piece together the clues from a history and exam and decide what tests and/or treatment are the next step.
This ain’t easy. Even the shortest residencies require a combined 7 years of medical school and postgrad training. Experience and learning makes us all faster, but then the number of things that you can handle in 15 minutes is minimal. And that doesn’t even include the time needed to answer patient or family questions (which can be quite a lot) write up or transmit test orders or a prescription, and, inevitably, document the entire encounter in a meaningful way.
I don’t see patients at such a breakneck speed in my office, and yet I still end up doing most of my dictations after (or before) office hours.
In spite of lip service by politicians and administrators to correct the issue, medicine still continues to penalize those services that require thinking. And this task is the center of being a good doctor – and always has been.
Procedures are more lucrative, but imagine how my colleagues in neurosurgery would react if they were given a similar time limit on cases: A new patient has to be on the table every 15-30 minutes, and in that time you have to open, do the surgery, close, meet with family, and document the whole thing. Then get back in the OR (scrub, first) before the next case. Doesn’t matter whether you’re doing a lumbar fusion, glioma resection, or carotid endarterectomy. Those are the time limits. You get 30 minutes for lunch and to return calls. The administrator said so.
Dr. Allan M. Block
And this is where medicine continues to go. Overhead costs keep rising, and, for most docs, the only way they know to keep up is to keep cramming more patients into the day. Nobody wants to practice shoddy, hurried medicine, but neither do they want to lose their jobs to the next hungry graduate or close down a practice they spent years building.
I wish I had an answer. In fact, I think most of us do, but not one that will make patients, administrators, and doctors all happy. So the spiral continues.
And that isn’t good for patients, the people at the center of this job.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.