Having Trouble Scheduling a Doctor’s Appointment? 

How Navigation Can Help. 

By: Dr. Eric Bricker  

Need to make a new appointment with a doctor? Well, you will have to wait… awhile.  

The average wait for a new patient appointment in America is 26 days. That’s the longest it has ever  been since the Merrit Hawkins company that performed the survey began measuring this statistic 20  years ago. 

There are long wait-times for doctor appointments because a lot of physicians have left the practice of medicine since the pandemic. A survey of 600 physician practices found that 40% had one or more doctors leave or retire early. 

Additionally, there are 195,000 vacancies for nursing positions in America every year because of a  nursing shortage. 

The shortage of doctors is predicted to worsen with an expected shortage of 21,000 – 55,000 primary care physicians by 2033. 

When a health plan member tries to find a doctor, appointment availability is one of the most 

important determining factors. Other important factors include doctor gender, quality, location, and cost, but if a plan member cannot make an appointment in a timely manner, then he or she might settle for a less desirable doctor just for the sake of ‘getting in the door.’ 

The Solution 

Unfortunately, there is no centralized database of doctor appointment availability. There are services like ZocDoc, but not all physicians participate in ZocDoc. There is no universally accepted scheduling website for doctors like ‘Open Table’ for restaurants. 

However, healthcare navigation services will often screen doctors for appointment availability and let plan members know what their options are. For example, a dermatologist 10 minutes away from a  plan member’s home may have a new patient appointment in eight weeks, but another dermatologist 25 minutes away may have an appointment in one week.

The healthcare navigation service can let the member know their options and then the member can decide what is most important to them. In the above example, the member can choose to wait longer for a nearby appointment or wait less for an appointment requiring more travel. 

The decision for plan members becomes even more complex when quality and cost are considered  as well. To continue the above example, the first dermatologist may be lower quality (as measured by  how well they follow guidelines dictated by dermatologists themselves) and higher cost. Conversely,  the second dermatologist may be higher quality and lower cost. 

If the plan member was ‘on-the-fence’ about which dermatologist to choose, the additional quality and  cost information may help them fine-tune their decision. 

Healthcare navigation services are the key. Healthcare navigation simplifies the complexity of our  fragmented US healthcare system and allows for expert assistance at a time when a member may not  be feeling well or may be under emotional stress from their medical condition.   

Which doctor a member chooses is one of the most important decisions someone can make  regarding their health. Healthcare navigation can help ensure that decision is the right one. 

About the Author: 

Dr. Eric Bricker is an internal medicine physician who graduated with Honors from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and completed his residency at Johns Hopkins  Hospital in Baltimore. He is the former Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Compass  Professional Health Services.

We are thrilled to have his industry expertise here at Coupe to  help us better serve our members and clients.