abdominal pain in the pcp office

[Guest guest]

I was curious to get some group feedback on a tricky subject.I am now working for a group called zoom care with clinics in Portland OR and Seattle. Its an interesting group trying to bring a new perspective to primary care.In the past, management had considered abdominal pain a 30 min visit. But it was changed several months ago to 15 minutes. Its been met with some backlash, particularly when trying to see a female patient with abdominal pain in 15 minutes--between a pelvic exam and checking a UA and often a Urine pregnancy test, it can really put a provider behind in the schedule.I'm currently working with the rest of management to figure out is there a compromise or a way to get back to the 30 min visit template, at least for female patients.Of course, the initial concern I get is the loss of revenue--not just seeing potentially half of the abdominal pain patients in a week/day/month system wide, but also all the other patients that can't be seen because a female abdominal pain would take up two -15 min appointments.It does certainly seem to underscore how reliant and or beholden primary care is just to volume of visits let alone complexity.So I'm just crunch some numbers but if anyone had any insight in how they handle this in their own practice, Including how long you spend with an abdominal pain patient (30 min visit, 15? 20 ?) I would be curious to hear about it…We also have the typical pressures to not make any mistakes, to not have any angry patients that are going to complain, etc etc,, and obviously we don't want a patient to have a bad outcome or miss a potentially serious diagnosis…-- Sent with Sparrow