Many topics compete for time when patients visit their doctors. Dr. Thomas G.McGuire and colleagues studied videotaped visits by elderly patients to their primary care physicians to measure the length of time each patient spent with the doctor and the amount of time devoted to specific topics.

The researchers discovered that the office visits averaged a little over 15 minutes and covered an average of six topics. Only about five minutes were devoted to the longest topic, with other topics receiving just over one minute of time. The length of the visits overall varied little, even when the contents of the visits varied widely.

The authors conclude that highly regimented office-visit schedules may interfere with doctors’ ability to spend enough time with patients who have complex or multiple problems. Efforts to improve the quality of care need to recognize the time pressure on both patients and doctors, the effects of financial incentives, and the time costs of improving patient-physician interactions.

This study was covered in the New York Times and other news outlets and will be published in Health Services Research.