Do you want cheap or good healthcare? Although we would like our good healthcare to be cheap, it can be difficult to get quality doctor time. As a patient I found that being limited to ten to fifteen minutes with a practitioner was frequently a waste of my time and money. If your problem is simple and you only have one problem, the doctor can be effective with just a few minutes. When your problem is more complex it takes time to get a full history and ask a patient questions about what is going on let alone make recommendations and answer any questions that the patient may have.
In our office we usually schedule fifteen to thirty minutes with a patient to discuss they’re situation before we accept them into our practice. Some people are just not a good match for what we have to offer and it is best for the patient to know that up front. Our new patient exam last for an hour and then we spend another hour going over the findings and recommendations. Followup visits are at least thirty minutes. When you have time to interact and discuss issues with patients you can coach them through difficulties and give extra care and information that will aid in not only improvement but prevention of future problems as well.
The best thing that we give in our office is our time and attention. It helps to get to the root of the patient’s health decline and not to just alleviate symptoms.
