You wake up feeling like you might have the flu or you become sick to your stomach at work. Sounding pitiful as possible, you call your doctor’s office, hoping they can squeeze you in right away. It could be that you’d like to check in for a chronic medical condition and wish you didn’t have to wait.
Good luck with that, though, particularly if you’re a new patient. Appointment wait times are on the rise, according to a 2017 survey by a national physician search firm. Patients wait an average of 24 days for a new physician appointment in major metropolitan areas, and 32 days in mid-sized areas, according to the Merritt Hawkins survey.
However, you just might be in luck. Some medical practices now offer same-day appointments on request. There doesn’t need to be an emergency and you don’t have to be acutely ill. Here’s how three U.S. health care providers make it happen.
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Convenience and Continuity
It’s Tuesday and Dr. Todd Furness of Lone Peak Family Medicine has seen seven last-minute patients in addition to previously scheduled arrivals. Several months ago, his practice, located in the south Salt Lake Valley area of Utah, extended its office hours and made staffing tweaks to accommodate same-day patients.
On this shift, two same-day patients come in with flu symptoms. For the flu, Furness says, it’s best for patients to be seen as soon as possible for treatment to be most effective. Now, he says, “We’ve been able to get people in, diagnosed and treated right away.”
For people with chronic conditions, Furness says, such as diabetes or heart failure, being seen immediately by a familiar provider may prevent worsening symptoms from spiraling out of control. Patients with diabetes experiencing blood-sugar extremes could be quickly treated, have their medication doses adjusted and receive follow-up advice and near real-time tracking of their blood-sugar levels once home.
Parents also appreciate the same-day option. “Usually they’re on a tighter schedule,” Furness says. “Especially for first-time parents, when they’re not sure what is or isn’t normal, we can get people in, evaluate their kids and give them that education and reassurance.” If there is a concern, parents have guidance on what to look out for in their child.
Lone Peak Family Medicine belongs to a larger organization, MountainStar Healthcare, which has been providing same-day service since 2010. About two-thirds of the medical group’s roughly 50 physician clinics, spread mostly through Utah with a few in Idaho, make same-day appointments, with some offering Saturday-morning slots.
Rather than establishing urgent care facilities, MountainStar made the decision to build out their extended-hours and same-day-appointment model, says Audrey Glasby, a MountainStar spokesperson. “It’s very specifically designed to maintain continuity and good care for our established patients who we see over and over again,” she says. Allowing windows of time for same-day appointments is part of that overall process.
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Same-Day Specialists
Specialist care when you want it? It may seem unlikely but that’s what some patients receive. Same-day appointments keep rising for Cleveland Clinic, which started offering them in 2008. From roughly 675,000 in the first year, more than 1.3 million such visits took place in 2017. “It’s very popular with patients, obviously,” says Dr. Robert Wyllie, chief medical operations officer.
Cleveland Clinic launched the same-day program in recognition of the difficulty of assessing over the phone whether new patients could wait three months, three weeks or needed to be seen right away, Wyllie says. “So we decided to leave it up to them, in terms of trying to determine their own urgency,” he explains.
The organization takes its same-day commitment seriously. Wyllie describes the “guardrails” that were put around the program. The heart and vascular, neurological and various other Cleveland Clinic institutes are expected to honor same-day requests at least 95 percent of the time, he says. In most cases, by calling in before noon, patients will see a specialist that day, according to the Cleveland Clinic website. Truly last-minute patients who call past noon will be offered a next-day appointment.
[See: 6 Reasons You’re Procrastinating on Your Health Goals — and How to Stop.]
Evolving Consumers
With online services like Zocdoc that let people locate nearby doctors and book appointments by tapping on an app, it’s clear that health care consumers are increasingly ready to set their own calendars. Established health care providers are also reaching out to patients who crave more convenience.
About a year ago, Mount Sinai Health System in New York City began offering same-day appointments across a wide range of specialties. “We recognize in this day and age of health care or any other field, there are many people who want service when they want it, and often it’s on that day,” says Dr. Abraham Warshaw, senior vice president and chief and medical director for access services.
Same-day care means more than just squeezing in acutely ill patients, Warshaw emphasizes. The approach encompasses a wide range of needs, from patients concerned about ongoing headaches to those newly diagnosed with a frightening condition, like cancer, in search of a second opinion.
The first contact for callers is a registered nurse. With direct-access scheduling to specialists, nurses and coordinators match patients’ medical needs, insurance coverage and time and location preferences as closely as possible. “We’re able to look into the schedules of a lot of our doctors and make use of the broad capacity that the health system has throughout the city and surrounding areas,” Warshaw says.
Same-day appointments may encourage reluctant patients to seize the moment, he suggests: “We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the people who say, ‘Today is the day I finally want to see a primary care provider. I want to move my health care along.'”
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The Doctor Will See You Today originally appeared on usnews.com
