The satisfaction of patients with cardiovascular disease as well as their care partners is dependent on several factors. One of these factors is the wait time; the duration that a patient has to wait before securing an appointment with a cardiology specialist or the duration of waiting to be attended. The wait time has been a significant reason behind negative ratings among patients of the cardiology departments in healthcare facilities. Notably, there are several factors that pose effects on waiting time for appointments in this particular area of medical specialty. These factors include workforce shortage and time-consuming procedures.
Russel, Halloway, and Grace (2011) say the reason behind the long wait time is the lack of enough specialists in the field of cardiology. Most states in the United States lack enough cardiology specialists and thus making the available doctors in this field subjected to a heavy workload. The imbalanced ratio between cardiologists and cardiology patients tends to pile much pressure on the doctors, and they are unable to attend to all the patients in good time. Further to this, cardiology care has seen emerging advanced procedures that take more time and pile more pressure on doctors. Example of such procedures includes angioplasty and drug-eluting stents which are time-consuming and thus increase the wait time for cardiology patients. Cardiologists tend to have a preference for attending to urgent conditions over and above non-urgent cases. This implies that new patients whose circumstances do not prove desperate and critical are most likely to be put on long duration of waiting before they get considered for consultation (Collins, Suskin, & Grace, 2015).
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Kehler, Beaulac and Avery (2017) suggest that heads of cardiology departments can assign general practitioners to offer primary care in cardiovascular cases as a way of offering solution to the pressure and lack of enough staff. Additionally, more cardiology training should be provided to enable more doctors to get to handle cardiology patients. It would also be essential to improve the equipment that performs procedures such as angioplasty as a way of speeding up treatment to improve wait time.
References
Collins, Z. C., Suskin, N., Aggarwal, S., & Grace, S. L. (2015). Cardiac rehabilitation wait times and relation to patient outcomes. Eur Journal of Physical Rehabilition Medicine , 51 (3), 301-309.
Kehler, D. S., Kent, D., Beaulac, J., Strachan, L., Wangasekara, N., Chapman, S., & Avery, L. (2017). Examining patient outcome quality indicators based on wait time from referral to entry into cardiac rehabilitation. Journal of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation and prevention , 37 (4), 250-256.
Russell, K. L., Holloway, T. M., Brum, M., Caruso, V., Chessex, C., & Grace, S. L. (2011). Cardiac rehabilitation wait times: effect on enrollment. Journal of cardiopulmonary rehabilitation and prevention , 31 (6), 373-377.
