Do You Spend an Hour Waiting For Your Doctor?

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A new study has been making the rounds today. Over at JAMA, a team of researchers used one survey to calculate average time spent in face-to-face time with a doctor and another survey to calculate total average “clinic time” (wait time plus doctor time). If you subtract doctor time from clinic time, you get average wait time. That’s shown in the chart on the right.

But something isn’t right here. The takeaway is that minorities tend to have longer wait times than whites, which wouldn’t surprise me at all. (They also have longer travel times.) But even whites have an average wait time of one hour. That’s nowhere near this white boy’s experience for any of the doctors/medical systems I’ve ever been part of. What’s more, other studies suggest that average wait time is around 20 minutes or so, which seems more likely.

So….I’m not sure what’s going on here. Something about this study doesn’t seem right, and I don’t know if it’s in the methodology or in the interpretation everyone is putting on it. In any case, if you read about this study, I’d take it with a grain of salt for the moment.