Why don’t you have separate sick and well waiting rooms?

Written by Suzanne Berman MD. Dr. Berman is a practicing general pediatrician in rural Tennessee.

We’re occasionally asked by families why we don’t have separate waiting rooms for sick and well patients.  It’s a good question, especially given that many pediatric offices are designed this way.  There are several reasons why we chose not to do this.

 What ‘s a “sick” visit vs. a “well” visit?  

The first problem is one of definition.   While some kids are very clearly sick and other kids are clearly well, many of the visits we do don’t fit nearly into one category or another.  Is a depressed teenager “sick” or “well” ?

What about a 4 year old with a possible urinary tract infection?   An infant who’s not gaining weight?  An 8-year-old with belly pain?   A better way to separate the waiting rooms would be a “contagious” waiting room and a “noncontagious” waiting room.

However…

Parents often don’t know whether a child is contagious or not when they check in.  

We don’t expect them to be – that’s our job.   If a child comes in with a new rash, it might be eczema (not contagious at all), chickenpox (very contagious), or ringworm (only very mildly contagious, and certainly not enough to keep them out of school or sports.)   Fifth disease is contagious and causes a rash – but once the rash appears, the child is no longer contagious.

Knowing whether the child is contagious (and how contagious, and for how long) first requires a medical evaluation – and that happens after the child has been brought back, not in the waiting room.

What about siblings? 

We often see double or triple appointments in a family.   If Dad brings in a 6-month-old baby for a checkup (a well visit) and his two year old sister for a cough (a sick visit), what side of the waiting room should the whole family sit on?

We could put the well baby on the sick side (since he’s already been exposed to the two year old’s illness, presumably), or we could put the sick child on the well side (to keep the well baby well.)   There’s no good answer.

And I can’t put a number on the times I’ve seen a well child who was accompanied by a parent who was coughing and sneezing uncontrollably.

It actually can make crowding in the waiting room worse.

Our office’s single large waiting area measures about 20 x 30 feet.   Let’s say we divided it in half, to create separate sick and well waiting areas, each about 20 x 15 feet.

In the summer, when 70 percent or more of our visits are “well,” our patients would be crammed in a much smaller room while our “sick room” would be underutilized.

The exact opposite would be true in the winter months –a crowded waiting room of sick children half as big as it could be.   When we have a single large area, we can make the most of our space; families can sit wherever they wish, near or far away from anyone else in the waiting room.

Parents are sometimes not honest about their child’s contagious condition.

I once reviewed a malpractice case in which the plaintiff contended that the defendant pediatrician didn’t recognize a baby’s sickness. The defendant’s attorney asked the plaintiff’s grandmother (who had brought the baby to the office) whether the grandmother chose the sick or well side.

The grandmother said, “We sat on the well side.”  The defendant’s attorney asked, “If the baby was sick, as you say, why did you sit on the well side?”   The grandmother replied, “Well, she wasn’t very sick at the time – just a little sneezing and cough.  And I didn’t want her catching something from the sick side.”

Honest parents will admit that they’re usually more concerned about keeping their own child away from other sick children, rather than worried that other well children will catch their child’s illness.

Our receptionists don’t want to police the waiting rooms.

Colleagues with separate sick and well waiting rooms tell me that their receptionists spend at least part of each day helping parents decide which waiting room to sit in, moving patients from one waiting room to another, or settling angry squabbles between two families who are convinced the other’s child is in the “wrong” area.

Our receptionists would rather check in patients quickly – validating insurance information, updating phone numbers, and processing questionnaires — rather than serving as “waiting room police.”

There’s no evidence separate sick and well waiting rooms make a difference in controlling the spread of infection.

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ statement on controlling infection in pediatric offices states, “No studies document the need for, or benefit of, separate waiting areas for well and ill children.”

We believe that other commonsense precautions are more effective – like making masks, tissues, and hand sanitizer available in the waiting room; bringing children suspected of having an extremely contagious disease in through the back door; bringing extremely fragile/susceptible children back as soon as they enter the office.