How long should a doctor's visit actually be?

The average primary care visit in the United States runs about 17.5 minutes from check-in to check-out, with roughly 8 to 12 minutes of actual face time with the clinician. By the time you have updated your address, run through your medication list, and explained what brought you in today, the visit is already past the halfway mark. There isn't much room left for the conversation that actually changes anything.

Where the 7-minute visit came from

It wasn't a clinical decision. It was a financial one. As reimbursement rates dropped and overhead rose, the only lever most primary care clinics had to keep the lights on was to see more patients per hour. The 7-minute slot exists because the math of a fee-for-service practice running on commercial insurance reimbursement requires it. Patients didn't ask for it, and doctors didn't choose it.

What a 60-minute visit actually changes

At Linden, we hold our new-patient visits at 60 minutes and our follow-ups at 30. That isn't a luxury — it is the minimum block of time required to do a few specific things that 7 minutes does not allow for:

• Read your records before you walk in. A 5-minute pre-visit read of your outside records means we don't burn your appointment on history we could have looked up in advance.
• Listen to the full story. Patients report being interrupted by their physician within an average of 11 seconds of starting to describe their concern. A longer visit means the story gets out before the differential diagnosis starts.
• Explain the reasoning, not just the recommendation. Adherence to a treatment plan goes up significantly when the patient understands the why behind the what.
• Write down the plan. A one-page written summary in the patient portal — what we found, what we recommend, what to watch for — eliminates the "wait, what did the doctor say?" call from the parking lot.

This isn't about generosity, it's about cost

The dirty secret of short visits is that they shift the cost downstream. The 8-minute visit that doesn't quite get to the bottom of a patient's fatigue becomes the $1,200 ER visit three weeks later for chest pain that was actually a thyroid issue all along. Slower medicine, paradoxically, is cheaper medicine — for the patient, the insurer, and the system as a whole.

It is also better medicine. The patients we treat the longest tend to be the ones who stay healthier. We catch problems earlier, we titrate medications more carefully, and we have time to address the contextual stuff — sleep, finances, stress, family — that drives most chronic disease.

How to find a clinic that actually has time for you

When you are evaluating a new primary care practice, the most useful questions are not about specialty or credentials. They are about logistics:

• How long is a new-patient visit?
• How long is a follow-up?
• Do I see the same doctor every visit, or rotate through whoever is available?
• Who responds to portal messages — my doctor, or a medical assistant on their behalf?
• What is the typical lead time for a non-urgent appointment?

The answers will tell you almost everything you need to know about whether the practice has the structural capacity to actually pay attention to you.