HealthIT Answers October 11, 2024
Industry Expert

By Lyle Berkowitz, MD, CEO, KeyCare

Patient wait times for physician appointments continue to reach excessive lengths, creating patient frustration and putting health systems at risk of losing patients to competitors.

Consider, for example, the average wait time for the third next available appointment across 11 medical specialties is 38 days, according to The Waiting Game report from ECG Management Consultants. Out of 253 metropolitan areas sampled in the report, only 6% had an average wait time of 14 days or less, which is generally considered the industry benchmark.

Wait times ranged widely across specialties, with the highest wait time of 68 days for rheumatology and the lowest 20 days for orthopedic surgery. For an appointment with a primary care...

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Topics: Digital Health, Health System / Hospital, Patient / Consumer, Provider, Technology, Telehealth
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