How many patients does a doctor typically have?

If they’re just on clinic duty, chances are they probably won’t, but if it’s more specialized, let’s so an oncologist, they’re probably going to remember the patient because they will see them more often. As for how many exactly, I can’t say.

About 1, 806 according to this site.

My doctor, who had his degree in Family Practice, just got overwhelmed by paper work and fed up with the limited amount of time he was able to spend with each patient. He quit and walked away…did not even try to sell the practice.

He told me he had over 1600 patients. But this is a small town area with limited medical facilities; and he was wonderful.

He is now a locum tenens at several area hospitals and much happier. HIS b/p is back to normal.

I work at a VA clinic full-time, which we define as 40 hours/week. In reality, it’s a lot longer because of phone calls and paperwork, but that’s not counted in terms of direct patient-care hours. For a full-time doctor, the patient panel size is ~1100. I see some of my patients only once a year, others every 6 months, and others much more frequently because of chronic medical issues.

As for remembering who someone is, that usually depends on how often I see them. I will always flip through their chart before I walk into the exam room to make sure that I haven’t missed any relevant points.

Depending the the specialty, the numbers can be much lower. In private practice, doctors canhave more control over this. In Psychiatry, the practice size is typically smaller.

If a doctor sees one patient every ½ hour during a regular 8 hour working day, she would see approximately 80 a week. However, most doctors I know of only work 6 hours a day, and 4 days a week, so that brings it down to less than 50 per week. They will ‘have’ many more patients, since they only see each person less than 3 times a year, so it depends on whether you are talking about the number of patients they see each week, or their total number of patients in their practice.

@YARNLADY I think doctors usually see at minimum 3 sometimes 5 patients per hour, depending on the specialty. Oncologists would be much fewer, probably 1 to 2 per hour. I just frequently feel dissappointed that doctors don’t seem to remember my situation, and when I look at how they have charted my story it is not what I have explained. I am not talking about doctors I see for healthy regular check-ups. I mean doctors who see me for a problem. I recently found out that a lot of the charting is done by what you tell the nurse before the doctor ever comes to talk to you, I am sure this varies by practice. I usually tell the nurse very limited information because the problems I have the nurse is typically clueless.

I book 15 minutes slots, open 8 available hours. Open 4–5 days per week and on call 24–7.

For efficiency, I’ve opted to sacrifice income to also preserve what’s left of my sanity, I block 1 per 4. This means 3×8 slots a day, plus squeeze ins.

Most physicians are doing 15 min x 4×8 hours – 32 slots a day. Most MDs work 4.5 – 5 full 8 hour days. This means 32×5 or 150 a week.

There are many factors that effect how much you will be remembered, but the critical thing, from a safety standpoint is, what is the status of the note as it pertains to relevant detail.

Some things which seem very important to you may not be what is important to your health, and MD’s have to fit concisely what matters in that tiny 15 minute or less slot.

Other times I hear a “broken record”

“it’s my thyroid” repeated over and over, about a person’s weight.

Actually the communication disconnect is that they are not hearing my broken record

“it’s not your thyroid”

There is a massively long list of possible scenarios where these disconnects could arise, and it’s hard to be helpful without more info.

It’s important to remember, that we are chosing to have doctors see patients, 5 an hour under the current system, which is the result of prior HMO style “reforms”.

In the good ole days it was 20–30 min per visit, and visits costed 8$

I was infuriated after hearing in a doctor conference from an MBA analyst in the organization I had sold my soul to:

“If you are still seeing 16 patients a day, you are practicing 1960’s medicine”

I went solo within a year.

May the buyer beware, and you are “buying” with your votes

My favorite doctors to date are the ones who took no insurance. I generally had half hour appointments, although the intial appointment was an hour. These were specialists, and I felt they did and do remember me and my concerns.

@DrMC LOL, I wish I could blame my thyroid for my weight. I do blame my thyroid for my hair loss and dry eyes. Thanks for so much detail.

And thanks to everyone for the great answers so far.

The no insurance trick is the solution, patients pay based on market value (which may be cheaper) – doctors work without restriction the way they want.

There is a movement in this direction- You wont see doctors going on strike. You’ll see them go cash only.

Most, like myself, don’t know how, or have the balls to do it. Going solo against everything I’d ever been taught was enough.

I work for the VA in primary care, and we still have 30 minute visits (60 min for new patients or hospital discharges). :-)

@Dr_Dredd That is why I want the whole country to be run like when I had military care or like the VA. I grew up with Military health benefits, I was lucky enough to be treated at Bethesda Naval, which is probably one of the better facilities, and when I got out in the real world as an adult I was very dissappointed. I have never had a primary care doctor who treated me like my primary I had a Navy.

@JLeslie Awesome!

I liked parts of the VA, some I didn’t.

@DrMC It’s definitely dependant on what facility you’re at. Some VA’s are excellent (the Puget Sound VA in Seattle comes to mind); others, not so much.

As the saying goes, “If you’ve seen one VA, you’ve seen one VA.” :-)

The problem with seattle is it’s a little too close to bill gates.