Thursday, August 4, 2011

Which doctors make you spend the most time in the waiting room?



Nobody likes sitting in the waiting room waiting for their doctor to see them. While most of the time waits are caused by emergency patients and other unexpected medical issues, excessive waits in the doctor's office are irritating for patients especially when the doctor does not apologize for the wait and gives no explanation for it. In the absence of the latter, many patients assume that the doctor was just out playing golf or otherwise wasting time.

The good news for those seeking eye and vision care is that the lowest wait times are in optometrists' offices! They have have an average wait of just 17 minutes. The worst wait times are in neurologists offices, where the average wait is 30 minutes. Among all doctors the average wait time was 23 minutes.

These results come from a survey conducted by medpagetoday.com.

The New York times has a story on waiting room frustration here.