RIGHT SPEAK: It Costs You $43 Every Time You Wait To See The Doctor

Anyone who has languished in a doctor’s waiting room, fuming as the minutes tick by, knows the frustration. Now, research from Harvard Medical School has calculated how many minutes patients spend seeking medical care — and the dollar value of their lost time.

The study estimates that the typical visit to a doctor consumes 121 minutes of the patient’s time — 37 minutes in travel, 64 minutes waiting for care or filling out forms, and only 20 minutes face to face with the physician.

Based on the average sum a person could earn if working during that time, the researchers figure, it costs patients $43 in lost time for each medical visit — more than the average out-of-pocket cost for the care itself, which is about $32.

“This is something we all experience,” said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, associate professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School and the study’s lead author. But his work, Mehrotra said, is the first to put a price on the time involved in doctor’s visits.

All told, his team estimated that Americans spent 1.1 billion hours per year obtaining such care for themselves or others — time the researchers valued at $52 billion.

Discussions of health care costs usually focus on money paid to doctors and hospitals, Mehrotra said. “Very rarely or almost never do we say, ‘Hey, how much time is this taking on [the] patient’s side?’ ”