Shrinkflation is hitting healthcare, and patients aren’t too happy about longer waits for shorter visits.
NYC Health and Hospitals rocked the boat last week after telling its primary care physicians to slash appointment times in half to 20 minutes, so they could squeeze in more patients.
- The public health system is grappling with 50,000 new primary care patients since 2021, which caused wait times to double to an average of 22 days.
- It’s a rough situation, and the physicians are understandably worried that shorter appointments will only hurt care quality and contribute to even more burnout as NYC HH was already struggling to compete with its private counterparts for clinical staff.
Nearly 1 in 5 patients now have to wait over a month before seeing a physician, with 43% reporting longer waits since the pandemic.
- Rising patient volumes and pent-up demand were the stars of the show during health systems’ Q2 investor calls, but the supply of providers has struggled to keep up.
- Ramping up physician training and recruitment hasn’t put much of a dent in the issue, and desperate systems are turning to shrinkflation to (temporarily) balance the equation.
A vicious cycle gets created when the escalating needs of an aging population get answered with less care for individual patients. Worse care only causes demand to grow faster, which is why new solutions are needed to break the cycle.
- Sutter Health told Axios that it’s investing in scheduling and referral tools to speed up wait times and streamline administrative workflows. Sounds better than 20 min visits.
- Providence said that it’s been leaning in on capacity optimization software to identify scheduling gaps and ensure that its surgical suites are operating with limited downtime.
While not every health system has the same resources as Sutter or Providence, most could probably avoid some costly headaches by incorporating lessons from the success of their peers, like not trading short-term solutions – shrinkflation – for bigger problems down the road.
The Takeaway
Times are tough, but shrinkflation is a brittle crutch.
