Merritt Hawkins' 2017 "Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times" reveals trends in physician appointment wait times and highlight several U.S. cities where wait times are especially slow or fast.
Here are five things to know:
1. At 24.1 days, the average new patient physician appointment wait time has increased by 30 percent since 2014. Wait time is longer in mid-sized metro market than in large metro markets.
2 Of the 15 large metro markets Merritt Hawkins surveyed, Boston's average new patients physician appointment wait time is the longest at 52.4 days and Yakima, Wash., has the highest average new patient physician appointment wait time of the 15 mid-sized metro markets Merritt Hawkins surveyed.
3. Dallas has the lowest average physician appointment wait time of the 15 surveyed cities at 14.8 days while Billings, Mont., checks in at 10.8 days to have the lowest average physician appointment wait time of the mid-sized market cities.
4. The 15 large-sized markets' shortest time to orthopedic surgery appointment averages out to 1.3 days, a decrease from the 2.1 days found in the 2014 study. The longest time to orthopedic surgery appointment in these cities, however, has risen from an average of 31.8 days to an average of 56.3 days. The combined average time for orthopedic surgery appointment in these 15 large cities is 11.4 days, which is an increase over the 9.9 days it took in 2014.
5. Mid-sized metro markets' average time to schedule an orthopedic surgery is 15 days, 32 percent longer than the large metro market average.
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