Authors: Melinda A Chen James P Hollenberg Walid Michelen Janey C Peterson Lawrence P Casalino
Publish Date: 2010/12/08
Volume: 26, Issue: 3, Pages: 235-235
Abstract
Authors reply— We thank Dr Schattner for his response to our article We agree that in addition to the time constraints placed on primary care physicians due to patient care activities outside of office visits AOVs physicians also face significant time constraints in providing comprehensive care to patients during office visits 12 The proposed timetotask ratio may be a useful way of studying time allocation to essential components of patient care both in and outside of office visitsThe time spent performing AOVs is separate but related to invisit care time both of which are major parts of the physician workday Our study found that the majority of AOVs were “nonvisit specific” meaning that they did not pertain to patients seen for an office visit on the study day We found that general internists perceived that a substantial portion of these nonvisitspecific AOVs substituted for office visits with each performed in less than a quarter of the time that a visit required If policies were realigned to encourage substitution of nonvisitbased care encounters for visitbased care when appropriate more time might be freed up for physicians to spend in fewer but longer office visits with the patients that require facetoface care encounters
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