Outpatient Office Wait Times And Quality Of Care For Medicaid Patients.

ABSTRACT: The time patients spend in a doctor's waiting room prior to a scheduled appointment is an important component of the quality of the overall health care experience. We analyzed data on twenty-one million outpatient visits obtained from electronic health record systems, which allowed us to measure time spent in the waiting room beyond the scheduled appointment time. Median wait time was a little more than four minutes. Almost one-fifth of visits had waits longer than twenty minutes, and 10 percent were more than thirty minutes. Waits were shorter for early-morning appointments, for younger patients, and at larger practices. Median wait time was 4.1 minutes for privately insured patients and 4.6 minutes for Medicaid patients. After adjustment for patient and appointment characteristics, Medic

SUBMITTER: Oostrom T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5812017 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature