Originally posted by Zero
This sort of thing happens in the US too, you know. It depends on where you live, and how busy the doctor is.
6 weeks for an MRI? My ass! Maybe somewhere in the middle of montana.
The fact is that we have more MRI's per capita than Italy.
We also treat out healthcare more efficiently.
I'm not sure what the rest of the country is doing, but I have viewed a growing trend throughout Texas (Houston, Austin, Dallas, Brownsville, and El Paso) of a hierarchial setup that allows a single doctor to handle 15 patient rooms. This is done through a 'stacking' of roles with a large number of nurses, a slightly smaller number of PA's, a nurse practitioner or two, and at the very top, a single doctor.
TO the patient, it looks like this:
Nurse runs you through triage and brings you into the exam room.
The PA comes in and does the diagnoses.
The Doctor comes in and makes sure that he concurs with the PA's findings, rights prescriptions, makes referal to another doctor, etc.
This setup is insanely efficient in moving patients through the process quickly. The down side, is as has been stated, it cost more for all that man power. However, it results in a much quicker program than the old process of nurse directly to doctor, in which a doctor would often only see 5-6 exam rooms at a time.
