Doctor wait times just over 3 weeks

Aging population, ACA, other factors increase demand in Dayton area.

The average wait time for a new patient to see a doctor in the Dayton area is just over three weeks, but that’s still about a week shorter than the average waiting period in many other mid-sized metro areas, according to a new study.

The average wait time between scheduling a routine appointment and seeing a physician in

the Dayton area is 24.6 days, com- pared to an average of 32 days for all 15 metro areas of similar size examined in the study from Merritt Hawkins, a physician-staffing firm that has been monitoring doctor’s office wait times since 2004.

Only three medium-sized metros had shorter wait times than Dayton — Lafayette, Ind.; Hampton, Va.; and Billings, Mont., where wait times were 24 days, 19.2 days and 10.8 days, respectively.

Still, wait times can vary dramatically because physician access at specific practices is a function of a variety of factors, including the number of physicians available and patient demographics.

Robert Baird, chief executive at Dayton Physicians — one of the area’s largest oncology practices — said the group has seen an increase in the volume of patients, in part, due to the area’s aging population, which increases

the likelihood of a cancer diagnosis. But the practice has managed to keep wait times under a week for new patients by utilizing more nurse practitioners and physician assistants who work in concert with the prac-

tice’s doctors to see patients, Baird said. Last year, Dayton Physi- cians saw 36,000 individual patients, Baird said, and new patients were given the highest priority.

“We know t hat new patients, especially if they’ve been diagnosed with cancer, want to get checked out as soon as possible, so we have adjusted physicians’ sched- ules, and blocked out new-pa-

tient slots to make sure we have space for new patients. In some urgent cases, we’ve seen new patients on the same day.”

Experts attribute the Dayton area’s relatively short waiting times to the high number of physicians and medical facilities in the area.

But the 32-day average for the mid-sized markets was significantly higher than the 24.1-day average for 30 large metro markets in the study.

Researchers based their findings on appointments made at 494 physician offices in the mid-sized markets,

and 1,414 physician offices in large markets across five specialties, including family practices, OB-GYNs, cardiologists, dermatologists and orthopedic doctors.

The study found wait times have spiked dramatically

over the past several years in larger markets, but there was no comparable histor- ical data available for the

mid-sized markets, which were studied for the first time this year.

The average wait time to see a family medicine physician in larger markets, for example, is 29 days — up 50 percent from 2014. Overall, the average wait time for all five medical specialties in the 15 large metro markets was up about 30 percent from 2014, the survey found.

Although data was not col- lected on the underlying causes of longer wait times, researchers suggested the Affordable Care Act, which has provided health coverage for millions of newly insured Americans, as well as increased rates of employment and employer-spon- sored insurance have contributed to long waits in doctors’ offices.

In addition, longer wait times may be driven by the growing 65-plus population joining the ranks of Medicare recipients, and who are three

times more likely to visit a doctor than their younger counterparts, according to the study.

“A more generally insured population may have led to increased demand for physician services, increasing wait times during a period when physicians are in short supply,” the study authors wrote, citing a forecast by

the Association of American Medical Colleges, which proj- ects a shortage of 65,500 doctors in the U.S. in 2020, and as many as 90,400 by 2025.

However, access to health insurance doesn’t guarantee access to physicians, according to the study, which also looked at Medicaid and Medicare acceptance rates in large and mid-sized markets.

Much of the increased insurance coverage in Ohio

and the local area can be attributed to the expansion of Medicaid under Gov. John Kasich, but 40 percent of doctors in the Dayton area don’t accept Medicaid, according to the study. The acceptance rate for Medicare in the Dayton area was much higher at 81 percent.