#15 minutes for me series
Because of this series of events, nowadays, 15-minute doctor visits have become the norm with no apparent change on the horizon. Medicare then set its reimbursement rules based on this length of time, private insurance companies followed suit, managed care took over in the mid to late 1990's, N*Sync emerged and then later broke up, Justin Timberlake became a star and medicine was no longer the same. Based on this formula, a typical primary care office visit should be 1.3 RVUs, which using the American Medical Association coding guidelines at the time translated to 15 minutes. The purpose of this now archaic formula was to reduce the variability in physician fees.
(Work RVU x Geographic Index + Practice Expenses RVU x Geographic Index + Liability Insurance RVU x Geographic Index) x Medicare Conversion Factor
That year Medicare adopted the following “relative value unit”, or RVU, formula as a standard way to calculate doctors’ fees: (Are you listening, Marty McFly and Doc Brown, in case you want to use your time machine?) Yes, the fateful decision that led to today's visit length occurred several years before N*Sync and Google even got started. Yes, 1992 was apparently when it all started. How, then, did insurance companies decide that 15 minutes is enough? As this piece by PBS explains, the answer is not completely clear but probably comes from a decision made by Medicare in the year 1992.
Currently, insurance seems to pays hospitals, clinics and doctors only enough to justify 15-minute appointments. The reason is insurance reimbursement, which dictates a lot of what is done in medicine.