BACKGROUND The goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was to expand patient access to health care. Since the rollout of the PPACA, Medicaid patients have demonstrated difficulty obtaining appointments in some specialty care settings. PURPOSE To assess the effect of insurance type (Medicaid and private) on patient access to orthopaedic surgery sports medicine specialist...

This paper analyzes the impact of type of insurance, income, and reason for appointment on waiting time for an appointment and waiting time in the physician’s practice in the outpatient sector. Data were obtained from a German patient survey conducted between 2007 and 2009. We differentiated between GP and specialist and controlled for socioeconomic, structural, and institutional characteristic...

This contribution focuses on the question why eappointment has not (yet) become a “killer application”. It reports on two strategic efforts to introduce e-appointment applications in a given environment: (1) the Hamburg city state administration seeking to improve its e-government services through allowing citizens to make appointments with administrative staff, and (2) the Hamburg medical asso...

Appointment systems try to achieve a balance between the time the doctor waits for patients to arrive and the time patients spend waiting to be seen. Mathematical analysis reveals that the time a patient can expect to wait increases exponentially as the appointment interval is reduced. An appointment interval that is less than the median consultation length can result in long waits for patients...

Background: Appointment scheduling system is a critical component in controlling patients’ waiting time, so can increase the efficiency and timely access to health services. It is also an important determinant of patient satisfaction. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship of using a scheduling system and outpatients’ waiting time in a general teaching hospital in Tehran, Iran. M...