According to a new study, family doctors are not only seeing adult patients more often, they are also spending more time on consultations to improve the quality of the visits.

Lead researcher, Dr. Lena M. Chen reporting the study in the 9th November issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine said, compared to a decade ago, during office visits patients were seen to spend more time with their primary care physicians, including receiving better care, overall.

Even as, the U. S. health care system is working on improving care and lowering costs, an aging population and falling income for doctors may lead them to cut patient visits shorter, in order to make up for the short fall.

Data was collected on over 46,000 primary care doctor visits between 1997 and 2005 to find factors that affected the quality of care provided by them.

Increasing 10% from about 273-million primary care doctors visits in 1997 to 338-million in 2005, the average duration of adult primary care visits increased 16%, from 18-minutes to 20.8-minutes.

Time spent with the doctor for regular check-ups went up 3.4-minutes; diabetes diagnosis visits increased 4.2-minutes and 3.7-minutes for high blood pressure, lengthening 5.9-minutes for a joint disease diagnosis.

The researchers using nine medical, counselling and screening indicators found quality of care has also improved.

Doctors took 2.6 to 4.2-minutes longer for visits that included counselling or screening than without these services. Though, longer visits were not associated with providing medication.

According to researchers, the reason behind lengthier visits to the doctor’s office could be due to doctors seeing older and much sicker patients, including patients taking more responsibility for their care, coming in more informed, with more questions and expecting to be involved in the decision making about their care.

Since, doctors are working a lot harder, health care professionals looking for creative solutions to free up doctor time are using group visit strategy, seeing multiple patients suffering from the same condition for care and self-management discussions.

As lifestyle and work demands see fewer people opting for career in family medicine, a wider use of electronic medical records and better reimbursement of family doctors is required.

Another report in the same issue of the journal reveals, emergency room waits have grown longer, lowering patient satisfaction, limiting access, and causing patients to leave before being seen.

As well, researchers also found doctors spent less time with racial/ethnic minority groups, with researchers writing: ‘our findings may explain why patients of minority groups do not always receive care that is comparable to that provided to white patients’.