You call your doctor's office for an appointment and are told it'll be about 3 weeks. You arrive on time only to sit in the waiting room for 30 minutes. Finally you get to see your primary care doctor and you begin to explain why you came in. The doctor asks a few questions, does a brief exam, gives you a prescription, suggests you see the specialist and within 10 minutes, you're out the door. No time for delving deeply into your issues. No time to build trust. No time for compassion. No time for actual healing.

Here are 5 reasons why your doctor's appointment cannot be longer than 10 - 15 minutes:

1) Primary care physicians are employees

Unless it's a private practice, primary care physicians don’t have the ability to make organizational decisions about the practice. Today’s primary doctor visits are commonly scheduled at 15-minute intervals, and some physicians who work at hospitals are asked to see a new patient every 11 minutes. So, doctors receive a mandate to see a patient every 15-20 minutes and they have to stick to that. It's not the doctor's decision to cut your appointment short, it's the way modern primary care practices are run. 

Primary care doctors make money by prescribing, testing, scanning, and rushing patients out the door as fast as possible. This is dangerous in terms of unnecessary testing and prescribing, and it’s also dangerous because communication in the doctor-patient relationship is lacking serious depth. It impacts the quality of care. But it’s not the physician’s fault that the system works this way. Doctors are actually very unhappy about it, too.

2) Healthcare is a business

The American healthcare system is all business. That means medical groups and private practices need to make a profit in order to survive. Medicare and health insurance companies do not reimburse primary care services well, so in order to make a profit, physicians are required to see more patients and more quickly, whether they like it or not. This is also why medical students are choosing specialties, rather than primary care. They realize that not only would they be spending the next few decades having to work under stressful time constraints, but they would be doing so while simultaneously sinking in school loan debt. Who could blame medical students for opting out of primary care? It’s exactly why the United States is experiencing a primary care doctor shortage. 

Furthermore, many smaller, private doctors’ offices are closing their doors because they cannot financially make it work. The overhead cost to run a primary care clinic is much more than just the doctors’ and nurses’ salaries. It’s also rent or mortgage, gas, electricity, the photocopier, telephone land lines, various test paraphernalia, vaccines, syringes, exam beds, along with costly malpractice insurance for both the office and the provider, which includes the licensing fees, IT support, the cleaning crew, benefits for the staff, fees for waste disposal, building maintenance, etc.

3) Access to the doctor

How fast do you want to see your doctor? Do you want to be able to see them on that same day, or are you okay with waiting 3 weeks?  

Depending on the practice, the average primary care doctor manages between 1,500 and 2,300 patients. So the access to your doctor is often one reason appointment slots must be shorter. The more patients a doctor is responsible for, the less amount of time the doctor can spend with each individual patient. 

4) Scheduling limitations

For those rare, lucky doctors who have the opportunity to vary the time templates for their patients, it may still not be enough. Why? Because the receptionist scheduling the appointment often does not have medical training. This means he or she will likely not be able to accurately gauge the complexity of the reasons for the patient’s visit and therefore, not allocate the appropriate amount of time for the appointment. 

5) Patient unpredictability 

Sometimes a patient may be scheduled for a regular check-up, but then the doctor discovers that their blood pressure is abnormally high. A bloog test has to be done. Or, a patient comes in with flu symptoms, but their last blood test for diabetes was over a year ago. An updated test has to be taken. Or, just as the doctor is completing the visit, the patient says, “I meant to bring this up earlier but I’ve been experiencing chest pain for the past few weeks. What do you think it could be?” 

The doctor cannot ignore the patient's questions but after 15 minutes, the time is up and the next patient comes in. 

Some primary care doctors are leaving their jobs in pursuit of something called “concierge medicine” or "direct primary care." In this kind of practice, the doctor doesn’t accept health insurance of any kind and cares for fewer patients, typically around 600. Each patient pays a flat monthly fee, usually $150 / month, in exchange for no wait times and unlimited access to their doctor including 24 / 7 personal cell phone access. Make the change today.