The patients at each clinic were sorted into three groups: Group A was composed of those who arrived at the clinic and were present in the examination room before their scheduled appointment time group B was composed of those who arrived before their appointment time but were not in the examination room until after their appointment time, indicating that the clinic was congested and group C was composed of those who arrived at the clinic after their appointment time. In all, 23,635 patient-doctor interactions were examined. The new investigation, he says, was specifically designed to learn whether physicians’ behaviors also affected clinic efficiency.įor this study, the Johns Hopkins team gathered data on patient appointment time, patient arrival time, patient interactions in the clinic and physician-patient interaction from a low-volume pain management clinic, a medium-volume academic pain management clinic and a high-volume radiation oncology service. Williams says the new research was inspired by the results of previous studies, which showed that enforcing patient punctuality reduced variability in patient wait time. Waiting is one of the most common complaints about outpatient clinics, so understanding behavior is key to finding ways to see a growing number of patients efficiently while still offering high-value care,” he says. I believe there is a happy medium that can be met that depends heavily on a consistent flow in the clinic. “There is always tension between spending time with patients so they leave feeling I’ve really listened to them and keeping patients’ wait times down. “We definitely demonstrated that the amount of time physicians spend with patients is influenced by whether doctors perceive their clinics are running on or behind schedule,” according to the study’s clinical leader Kayode Williams, M.D., M.B.A., associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. 1, 2016, in BMJ Open, confirms for health care services what is a commonly observed phenomenon in grocery store and bank teller lines: Once lines get backed up, service providers become less consistent in their behaviors and “shortchange” time spent with customers in order to catch up. The researchers say the retrospective study, summarized in a report published Oct. Click to TweetĪ study examining doctor and patient behavior at three Johns Hopkins Medicine outpatient clinics has found evidence that clinicians spend more face-to-face time with patients when the clinic is on schedule and less when the clinic is running late. When clinics run late, doctors act to make up lost time.Want more face time with your doc? Arrive to your appointment early.Doctors spend less time with tardy patients in busy clinics.
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