A study published March 10 in JAMA Network found a potential link between shorter primary care visits with patients and a higher likelihood of inappropriate prescribing.
The study analyzed electronic health data from 8 million primary care visits in 2017, totaling 4.4 million patients and 8,091 physicians. Analysis revealed younger, publicly insured, Hispanic, or non-Hispanic Black patients were more likely to have shorter visits.
The study found that for each additional minute in a primary care visit, the likelihood of an inappropriate antibiotic prescription dropped by 0.11 percent and the likelihood of opioid and benzodiazepine co-prescribing dropped by 0.01 percent.
The study also found that approximately 57 percent of visits that lasted fewer than 10 minutes resulted in an inappropriate antibiotic prescription, which dropped to 54 percent when the primary care visit was 20 minutes.
Although the correlation between visit length and inappropriate prescriptions is small, the authors wrote about the implications of visit-level differences.
"These visit-level differences may accumulate over time, potentially contributing to racial disparities in how much time patients spend with their physicians each year," they wrote. "Our analyses cannot explain why these differences exist but should motivate organizations and policymakers to detect, interrogate and address underlying systemic causes such as structural racism."