{"id":204903,"date":"2010-01-20T11:10:21","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T16:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/01\/20\/should-there-be-a-limit-on-wait-times-to-see-the-doctor\/"},"modified":"2010-01-20T11:10:21","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T16:10:21","slug":"should-there-be-a-limit-on-wait-times-to-see-the-doctor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/204903","title":{"rendered":"Should There Be a Limit on Wait Times to See the Doctor?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Doctor\"Starting next year, people in California may find it a bit easier to get in to see the doctor. The state is putting in place new limits on doctor wait times for the more than 20 million Californians who get insurance through HMOs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The limits include 10 business days for non-urgent primary care, 15 business days for non-urgent appointments with specialists, 48 hours for urgent care appointments that don’t require authorization, and 10 minutes to speak with an HMO’s customer service rep. (A longer list is at the bottom of this San Francisco Chronicle story<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The rules are the result of a law passed after people complained about waiting times in HMOs. An HMO trade group in the state called the limits a “reasonable compromise,” but said the rules would drive up prices, the Los Angeles Times<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

But some docs worry that HMOs may simply push them to work faster, rather than expand the network of doctors patients can see. “The pressure should be on health plans to have adequate networks of doctors,” a former president of the California Medical Association told the LAT.<\/p>\n

Health Blog Question of the Day<\/strong>: Should there be a limit on HMO patients’ wait times to see the doctor?<\/p>\n

Image: iStockphoto<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/img><\/a>
\n<\/img><\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Starting next year, people in California may find it a bit easier to get in to see the doctor. The state is putting in place new limits on doctor wait times for the more than 20 million Californians who get insurance through HMOs. The limits include 10 business days for non-urgent primary care, 15 business […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}