It seems to me that every time I am going to visit the Dr., I have to
wait 15-30 minutes before I see them.  What's the average waiting time
in a doctor's office? I am not looking for emergency room visits but
for Regular Dr, urolgy, endocronology & obgyn visits.  Are there any
national studies?

I am assuming that when you ask for "national studies," you refer to
studies based in the United States. If this is not the nation you had
in mind, please give me a chance to do additional research.

The most recent figures I've found indicate that patients with
appointments can expect to wait approximately twenty minutes to see a
physician.

These figures came from a study by the American Medical Association:

"The mean wait time for patients with an appointment is 20.2 minutes
across most specialties.
                     Mean wait time 

Solo practice         19.0 minutes 
2-physician practice  19.8 minutes 
3 physicians          23.2 minutes 
4-8 physicians        20.6 minutes 
9+ physicians         18.8 minutes 

Source: AMA's 2003 Physician Socioeconomic Statistics"

Cache of AMNews: Professional Issues
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:UNTjgWn9kZMJ:www.ama%EF%BC%8Dassn.org/amednews/2003/08/18/prl20818.htm

"Mean Time Spent with Physician (in Minutes), 1989-2002
Perhaps contrary to popular belief, physician visits have gotten
longer, not shorter, in the past 13 years. Visits were on average
about two and a half minutes longer in 2002 than in 1989 (18.4 minutes
vs. 15.9 minutes). The upward trend has not been continuous: there
have been periods of decline beginning in 1995 and 1999. The mean time
spent with physicians varies by specialty: the 2002 average for all
physicians was 18.4 minutes, but by physician specialty was, for
example, 15.2 minutes for dermatology, 16.1 minutes for general and
family practice, 27.9 minutes for neurology, and 35.2 minutes for
psychiatry."

Kaiser Family Foundation: Mean Time Spent with Physician
http://www.kff.org/insurance/7031/print-sec6.cfm

My Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: physician OR doctor "average wait OR waiting time" minutes
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=physician+OR+doctor+%22average+wait+OR+waiting+time%22+minutes

I hope this is helpful! If anything is unclear or incomplete, please
request clarification; I'll be glad to offer further assistance before
you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

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Request for Answer Clarification by kehupie-ga on 19 Jan 2006 18:27 PST

Thank you Pinkfreud.  I should have clarified in my question that I
was looking for a U.S. Based study.  No further research is needed.
However, are there any recent release studies from either 2004 or 2005
time period? thank you again.
It is interesting to note that greater than 3 physicians, the avg.
wait decreases. I am curious to know if there is a direct correlation
with the amount of people hired to help the doctors are increased with
practices of more than 3 physicians.

kehupie

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Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 19 Jan 2006 20:03 PST

Although I found numerous mentions of the 2003 AMA report, I found no
studies based upon data from 2004 or 2005. I doubt that this kind of
study is performed on an annual basis, so it is not unusual that the
references are a few years old.

Regarding the longer wait time in an office with three physicians, I
think your theory that this may have to do with the number of
assistants is plausible. However, I haven't found formal speculation
on this. The fact that practices with more than nine physicians are
seemingly most efficient in the timeliness of meeting patients also
might have more to do with the office's infrastructure than with the
physicians themselves, but I have not encountered any attempts to
analyze the meaning of the data in this way.

~pinkfreud

This is my first tiem using this service, and quite please with the
professionalism and the accuracy for which my questions were answered.
Pinkfreud.  Pinkfreud answered my question quickly and to the point.
thank you very much.

My experience is that doctors run progressively later as the day wears
on.  They are the least late in the morning.  Any time something
delays them, it doesn't get made up and every appointment for the rest
of the day is late by that amount.  If there are several such delays,
the doctor will get progressively later as the day wears on.

I am suspisios of the study.  Usually you get to the office on time
and then they progrssivly delay you.  1. they put you int he room at
least 10 minutes after your appointment. 2. then you wait at least 10
minutes before the nurse comes and records your pulse rate and blood
pressure.  3. Then 20 more minutes before you see the Dr.  So a 11:00
AM appointment is really a 11:45 appointment to see the DR. (but god
forbid you are late, then they charge you and cancel your appointment,
never mind they wouldn't have seen you when you showed up.)  I expect
that as long as I arrive on time for an 11:00 appointment then I
should be shown into the exam room at 11:00 and see the Dr. shortly
after that.(within 5 to 10 minutes, because it takes a few minutes ot
record blood pressure, get undressed etc.)

I'm wondering if the answer is confusing time waiting for a doctor and
time spent with the doctor.  The question asks about waiting time, but
the text to support the answer talks about time spent with the doctor.
 These are two very different measurements, but may be confused.

research_help,

The Kaiser Family Foundation site from which I quoted does indeed
concern time spent with physicians, which I thought the customer might
find interesting. However, the AMA study (from which I derived my
answer of "approximately twenty minutes") refers to "Mean wait time."
It is difficult to imagine that the AMA would describe time spent with
a doctor as "wait time."

kehupie,

Thank you for the tip!

~pinkfreud