Question
why does the doctor only spend five minutes with me and the other people do all the work?
Answer
Well, the reason is that market forces (i.e. particularly the managed care industry -with their reduced payments and frequent refusal to pay the doctor over silly issues so they can pay their grossly overpaid CEO's) are forcing everyone in health care to perform at maximum efficiency. The doctor simply cannot afford to spend a half hour with you like they did in the old days. Lots of equipment has been designed to make it perfectly safe for trained assistants to collect most of the data so the doctor need only analyze the data that was collected and make the decisions that require the judgement of a doctor. This allows the whole office to function more efficiently.
Of course, this can be carried too far. With only five minutes with the doctor, you probably miss the "warm, fuzzy" feeling that the doctor cares about you and is interested in your case. Trust me, I am sure the doctor would rather have time to really involve himself in your case than have to sort through data collected by his staff on five different patients in the half-hour he would have spent with you in the old days.
You will notice I am sure that pretty much the same thing has happened with all medical care, not just the eye doctor. Forced to take efficiency to an almost ridiculous level in recent years, heath care has truly lost something valuable. But blame the health insurance industry for this change, NOT the doctor!
