There is growing curiosity about the time-consuming nature of healthcare, with researchers more closely examining time spent in appointments as a so-called burden of treatment.
"The work of being a patient is a massively long list, and it continues to expand," Victor Montori, MD, an endocrinologist and researcher at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., told The New York Times. His observation points to the extensive, often invisible demands on patients' time.
The true scope of patient work extends far beyond the examination room. It encompasses preparing for and managing appointments, maintaining prescription regimens, navigating insurance bureaucracy, and making informed dietary choices through careful label reading. While these time commitments have long been acknowledged, they have rarely been systematically measured.
That's something research teams like those led by Ishani Ganguli, associate professor of medicine and general internist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, are working to change.
Dr. Ganguli and colleagues published research earlier this year that tallies the number of "healthcare contact days" for Medicare enrollees throughout the calendar year.
The study distinguishes between two types of healthcare engagement: ambulatory contact days, which include primary care visits, specialty appointments, tests, imaging, procedures and treatments; and total contact days, which also encompass time spent in hospitals, emergency departments, skilled-nursing facilities and hospice care.
Analysis of 2019 traditional Medicare data revealed that patients averaged approximately 17 ambulatory contact days annually. When including institutional care such as hospital and emergency department visits, the average rose to 21 days per year.
The research uncovered significant disparities among different patient groups. Those managing 10 or more chronic conditions — representing 14% of the study population — spent nearly double the average time in ambulatory care, logging 30 contact days annually. Eleven percent of patients required 50 or more total contact days.
"If doctors and clinics and healthcare systems paid attention to ways to lessen the burden, we'd all be better off," Dr. Ganguli told NYT. "And some are fairly simple." Her research identified immediate opportunities for improvement, noting that half of patients' test and imaging appointments occurred on different days than their office visits, suggesting one area ripe for consolidation.
As of 2022, there were 52 million Americans over the age of 65 — a population that grows by 10,000 each day. With Medicare patients already spending more than two weeks annually on medical appointments, and some spending upwards of 50 days, this expanding elderly population signals an urgent need to address the time burden of healthcare.