Nobody likes sitting in the waiting room. There is good news for patients, though, as the national average waiting time to see a doctor is 18 minutes and 35 seconds, according to Vitals—and that’s a decrease of one minute and 16 seconds compared to last year. Dentists lead the pack in seeing their patients quickly, as their 8 minute and 27 second average waiting time leads all doctor specialties.
Vitals studied millions of its online reviews to see how wait times correlate with ratings. Physicians with 5 stars, the highest rating on the Vitals site, had an average wait of 12 minutes and 33 seconds. Physicians with just one star, the lowest rating, had an average wait of 33 minutes and 4 seconds. Vitals concluded that there is a strong correlation between the time that patients wait and the rating they ultimately leave.
“Wait time alone is probably not the cause of the bad rating,” said Mitch Rothschild, founder and chairman of Vitals. “More likely, a doctor who can’t watch the clock may not be effectively managing other parts of the practice that impact the patient experience.”
This year’s results reflect an overall trend toward shorter waiting times, which are down 13% since Vitals started reporting on the data in 2009. The company attributes the shorter times to the expansion of urgent care centers, retail clinics, infusion centers, and outpatient surgery centers, which are taking the burden off of primary care physicians. Plus, many doctors are expanding hours to mitigate the weekday crush and compete with these other options. Vitals expects these trends to continue.
“With alternative care facilities, telemedicine, and even at-home diagnostic kits, in the not too distant future, we’ll only see our doctor for the most serious conditions,” said Rothschild. “For now, though, we’re seeing that expanded consumer choice has had a direct impact on wait times over the past 8 years.”
Geographically speaking, Milwaukee had the shortest wait at 13 minutes and 22 seconds, followed by Portland, Ore, Minneapolis, Anchorage, and Seattle. El Paso was at the bottom of the list, with a 52-second increase during the last year to a new total of nearly 26 minutes, for the sixth year in a row. Memphis, Las Vegas, Miami, and Detroit also were at the bottom of the list.
While dentists topped the list with the shortest patient wait time, they were followed by child psychologists and radiation oncologists, both at 10 minutes at 59 seconds, plastic surgeons at 12 minutes and 28 seconds, and chiropractors at 12 minutes and 35 seconds.
According to Vitals, dentists may have an advantage over their colleagues in other fields because they perform scheduled services for their patients. For example, dentists can accurately predict how long a cleaning or filling will take. Primary care doctors, however, need time to diagnose their patients’ vague symptoms, and that may throw off their schedule.
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