Are You Getting Enough Time with Your Healthcare Provider?

Who can relate to this? You’ve been dealing with pain, sickness, or some health scare for some time now, and you’ve finally decided it’s past the time of hoping it will spontaneously resolve. You decide it’s time to have this thing looked at by a pro. You line up all of your questions, book an appointment at their earliest opening (4 months from now!) and eagerly await answers and direction on what you need to do in order to address this nagging problem. The day of your appointment comes and you show up early. Then have to wait 45 minutes past your scheduled appointment time to get pulled back into the evaluation room. Lest not forget, you were lucky to only have to wait 45 minutes, because your cousin had to wait 2 hours at this very same office just 3 weeks ago. Then, your provider comes in, asks you what’s going on, listens to MOST of your story, then hurries the rest of the conversation along. After all, they have 8 other patients waiting in their respective rooms, or out in the lobby. It’s lunch time, and that provider has already seen 17 patients. You get your prescription for some medication and possibly some tests or imaging ordered, and you’re on your way – not much more certain of what’s going on than you were before that appointment.

Let us be clear, this is NOT good. You deserve more time with someone who knows how to help you. You deserve a thorough explanation of what the likely issue is (which requires a deep dive into your diagnosis – which takes TIME!).

Let’s be clear on this as well – this is very likely NOT your provider’s fault! They work in a system that is prioritizing quantity over quality. They work in a system that forces them to be more effective at time management than high quality diagnosis and getting to the root of people’s problems. IF they had more time to afford you and their other patient’s, they would be thrilled – AND THEY WOULD BE MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE AT HELPING YOU! Alas, sadly for them, this is not the system they get to operate within. They are constrained by a system that chokes each interaction, stifling the opportunity to build relationships and solve the deep problems that many patients are facing.

At WPT, we are trying like hell to change this narrative. Each and every one of our clinicians have been on the other side of the scenario described above. We’ve been limited, frustrated, and stressed that we’re not able to provide the care we know we could, only if we had more TIME to give. For this is the reason that WPT exists, and the reason each and every one of us has chosen to be on this side of healthcare history.

We’ve chosen a different path. Have you been frustrated by a scenario like the one described above? Our guess is you have. If you’re ready for someone to give you the time to listen, get to the bottom of your problems, and solve things for good, call us. We’re here for you.