How much time should a Doctor give for examining a Patient?

Doctor’s profession has got busy schedule and so, time factor plays a major role in determining Doctors Patient relationship. "Doctors have one eye on the Patient and one eye on the clock" says David J Rothman, Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University College. Shorter visits leaves a Patient with a Prescription for medicines rather than focusing on Patients behavioral changes like: losing weight, food to avoid etc. In clinical practices, Junior Residents in training are spending less time with Patients than ever before, While Interns and Residents spends their time in academic researches up to 50 years.

Several studies showed that Patient satisfaction and outcomes suffer and inappropriate prescribing increases, when a Physician spends less time with their patients, there may be even longer term repercussions of such hurried interactions between Doctor and Patient. When it comes to Medical Jobs or profession, Doctors experience during training strongly influences how he/she treats patients once in practice. Very little is known about how physician time is allocated in ambulatory care. In the clinical setting.

According to a study led by Christine Sinsley (MD) at the American Medical Association (AMA), published in Annals of Internal Medicine, 6 September 2016, Doctors spend only 52.9% of the time talking or examining the Patients and rest 37% doing paperwork. Medicare adopted the "Relative Value Unit" or RVU Formula as a standard way to calculate Doctors Fees:

(Work RVU X Geographic Index + Practice Expenses RVU X Geographic Index + Liability Insurance RVU X Geographic Index) X Medicare Conversion Factor.

The purpose of this archaic formula was to reduce the variability in physician fees. According to this formula, a primary care office visit should be 1.3 RVUs, translated to 15 minutes by using American Medical Association coding guidelines.

Strictly speaking about the Still, there is needed to emphasize to decrease Resident Doctors workload and make the current restrictions on hours more flexible. It will definitely alleviate several sorts of pressure which young residents now face and so, they would able to give more time to examine patients. It could also allow Doctors to spend more time with patients for better understanding of complications or diseases.

In nut shell, if a Doctor is spending 8 minutes talking to and examining a patient, something is certainly going to be missing. So, in accordance with American Medical Association, a Doctor should give minimum time of 15 minutes in examination of a Patient for proper diagnosis of the disease. This practice by Doctors will surely increase Patient compliance.

The Author is expertise in blogging and framing articles related to healthcare issues. In this article the Author has tried his best to highlight the scope of Doctor jobs in India.