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I feel a lot of appointment-based businesses are like this. They're trying to slot in as many services into one day as they can. Them making you wait is acceptable because they're with another customer (Though I'm sure they wanna wrap it up with them quickly too). You making them wait is unacceptable because that'll throw off their carefully timed appointment schedule.
It ain't great but that's the bitch of this damned money world huh
Them making you wait is also often a consequence of earlier patients showing up late or an appointment requiring more time than expected.
The options to solve it are less patients per day, but that leads to even longer delays before you even get to your appointment date, OR more professional staff in the office....but that would cut into profits of the people in charge so is immediately off the table in this damned money world.
In an ER, that's understandable, but in a general doctor's office there's no reason that Docs should extend one patient's appointment time just because they ended up late:
"Oh, you scheduled a 30 minute consultation because of a sore knee but now you're asking for an ENT referral and blood work? You'll have to schedule another appointment to go over that, we're only covering what you told us the other day."
You think someone should be penalised by having their diabetes review cut short because the traffic from their minimum wage job was unexpectedly slow?
But the question I ask myself everytime is : how carefully timed is it really, if everyone has to wait so much ?
Dunno bout your PCP's office, but I know some hospital workers and it seems like there's a lotta time waiting for transport because they're understaffed, underpaid. Also, lotta piss and shit related delays. Sometimes those compound.
Believe it or not, lotsa "customers" in hospitals aren't, like, operating at peak efficiency. So there's a lotta small delays that occur for normal consequences of that. A fifteen minute delay here because a patient can't move very quickly. A ten minute delay as a patient thinks they have to pee but no one can find a bed pan and they can't use a toilet. Then they don't have to pee. A thirty minute delay because they can't find the right kind of stretcher for a particular patient. An hour delay because, while you were scheduled to get your outpatient test done at 4 P.M. sharp, someone else from the Emergency Room needed that sort of test done ASAP.
If it’s so carefully timed, why is it ok for them to mess up the timing? I’m a paying customer and I have shit to do, too. Maybe it’s not true in the case of doctors, but for other businesses, the only reason you’re able to have this business is because I’m here, paying money.
Airports work like this. You arrive two hours before takeoff only to find out like half an hour before takeoff that the flight is delayed because there's no plane.
I spent 3 days in an airport because storms near Chicago caused a ripple of delays and cancelations all over the country, I was constantly being told "okay your new flight leaves in 5 hours" and I was in a city over 100 miles away from home with no transportation.
Overall I had tickets and replacement tickets for 9 flights. Honestly given some of the times we found out there was no plane, I didn't believe we would get to board even as they were calling boarding groups.
My favorite was receiving a text notification at 5:30AM thar my 8AM flight was canceled. Ruined my entire vacation
Better to be stuck on the ground than to be stuck in the air in a plane that needs maintinence, or in bad weather.
I was on a lay over and was lined up ready to board and they cancelled the flight. Was told to go to customer service to find another flight. Conveniently two other flights were canceled around the same time so they were over 900 people in the customer service line. After waiting about 45 minutes in line and moving about 20 spots forward and asking multiple airline employees that had no idea what was going on. I get a text message that my flight had been rebooked to a flight that had been delayed earlier in the day and it has finally showed up but it's leaving in 15 minutes and it's in a different terminal. I booked it over there and made the flight. Anyway, it was a mess. Extremely unorganized, handled terribly and it was just an all around piss poor experience. Did I get compensation for the inconvenience and time wasted? Of course not. Airline are allowed to charge hundreds of dollars and fuck things up without consequences.
At one point I setup an appt with a doctor, 3 weeks set date, and to be the first one in the morning, like 9AM, he cannot be late, right? I left at 11:30AM without seeing him.
The last time I took my daughter to the doctor's, we had the 8:30am appointment. First of the day.
I was feeling pretty optimistic that we would be in and out by 8:45.
So we arrive at 8:20 and take our seats in the waiting room. 8:30 rolls around, no call. 8:40, no call. 8:50 no call. At 8:55 a side door opens and 8 doctors stroll out with coffees in hand and make their way to their individual consulting rooms.
At 9:10 we got the call to go in.
I get that they might need to have a morning meeting to get setup for the day, but 8 doctors each wasting 40 minutes, and the entire appointment book playing catch-up for the rest of the day, seems like a colossal piss take.
Why not, like, have your meeting earlier.....?
Because every patient before you was 10-30 minutes late for their appointment so now you have to wait an hour.
Or, more likely in my experience, the doctors office is overbooked and anything more than 10-15 min/patient puts the whole schedule behind.
Their time is actually more important than yours
I'll have you know I have 27 cats at home which depend on me. My time is precious
I think veterinary offices are the only places I can understand. Everyone there is underpaid, working hard, enduring trauma, and doing it because they love animals. Although I've never seen them get upset at someone for being late!
veterinary offices are the only places I can understand. Everyone there is underpaid, working hard, enduring trauma, and doing it because they love animals.
Boy do I have some news about basically everyone in healthcare......
Pretty much everyone is making less than previous generations, and that's not even accounting for inflation. I am a specialty provider and the salary for my position hasn't increased in decades, all while licensing and education costs have skyrocketed.
Healthcare isnt the get rich quick scheme people seem to believe it is. It's basically hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for near a decade of school, just for the privilege to basically work for free for several years.
Pretty much any person in healthcare under 40 is there because they love people and want to help them. Nowadays it's just too difficult and thankless of a job for any other real reason other than empathy. There are plenty of easier and more profitable ways to make money.
The reason you may have experiences that run contrary to this is the same reason you've prob had to wait in a room for over an hour. The providers are not the ones in charge of their schedules, and are probably experiencing burnout.
The people making the schedules have no idea how much time is appropriate for the patient care the person is coming in for. All they know is management wants less down time and faster turnaround. So they just pile as many patients as they can schedule, and then utilize the patient's understandable agitation as a stick to prod the provider along.
Reading the comments in this thread just indicates to me that we need more doctors. The supply of doctors is definitely artificially restricted
For real. At least in the US medical school is incredibly expensive (on top of undergrad being really expensive too). Going to school is a huge risk, because if you find you can't handle it half way through, you've got all that debt,without the job to actually pay it. We've got so many incredible potential doctors and nurses that just can't afford to go to school
I had this happen when I was at my Dr's appt. I needed a script for oxygen. Prior to that, I watched several people walk in, get called to go to one of the examination rooms almost immediately. The thing is that each one of the other patients was obviously in far worse shape. When I finally was seen, my Dr started apologizing profusely. I told her that I know what triage means and to not worry about it. Stuff happens. If I was one of the others, I would want relief too.
This is the reality. A doctor is trying to see as many patients as possible who want to be seen. Not every condition requires the same amount of time. They do their best to estimate, but ultimately, if a doctor is willing to give you extra time, then the price is usually paying it forward by waiting longer in the waiting room for fellow patients. If you're late when they are ready, then you drop the efficiency of the entire day. If you're ready when they're not, well, yes, their time is actually more valuable in this case.
Our patient visits are set as 15 minute slots standard.
This isn’t enough time to practice good medicine for anything much more than something like a flu or strep throat. How does one squeeze in an entire rooming process followed by a solid HPI, physical, poc testing and then plan review with pt in 15 minutes?
They don’t.
But with how medicine works (in the US) it’s the how clinics make enough money to stay open.
For clarity: I work at a Federally Qualified Health Center, not a for profit clinic.
But with how medicine works (in the US) it’s the how clinics make enough money to stay open.
This is the truth. PCP offices in particular have razor-thin margins and insurance reimbursement goes down every year while supply, fixed, and staff costs go up every year. This is an insurance industry and healthcare system problem. Your doctors' offices are just doing everything they can to stay open.
The best way to fix this is to cancel the appointment if they make you wait. If enough people did this the clinic loses money which should cause change. Unfortunately, patients are largely a captive clientele, having already waited months and canceled work and with few if any alternative providers.
The next best thing is much more realistic. Plaster the internet with reviews complaining of the wait. If your doctor (or more likely your doctor's employer) does not respect your time, let everyone know.
Many of the other comments are also correct. I have worked in clinics in government, military, academic centers, venture capital, physician owned, and even free community health centers, all in the USA. Doctors running late is going to happen. I've kept patients waiting while in the operating room, while telling someone they have cancer or are losing a limb, and by my burnt out underpaid government scheduler incompetently overbooking. I will also tell you that when I have at least a little control over my own schedule, I've never made a patient wait an hour, even with the above happening. It can be done, it just isn't because for decades timeliness has not been a financial incentive.
Make it one. Name and shame on google, yelp, zoc doc, wherever. Do it gracefully and sensitively, recognizing that there is a high chance the delay is not the doctor or nurse's fault. Done right, you'll do them a favor when their employer feels the sting of lost patients.
You need a doctor, not otherwise.
Don't forget waiting for hours, going to the toilet for a leak and returning to see you've been skipped
Try 3 hours, it's the reason I bought a miyoo mini plus, just to take it to doctor's offices.
I told my wife, the day I see an actual fucking doctor when my appointment time is, I'll either die of shock or but a lottery ticket.
In my experience you're lucky if some not-an-MD is checking your weight and blood pressure within half an hour, but if you're five minutes late they're sending you a bill for them doing literally nothing and canceling you entirely. I've never seen anybody so high on their own fucking importance while at the same time showing not the slightest smidgen of respect for the time of anyone else unfortunate enough to have to interact with them.
I wish I had a job where I could fuck up the timing of every single task every single day that consistently and still be employed. Not that I would, because I recognize that other people's time matters.
I had this discussion recently and my friend pointed out that this also happens with utility workers on in-house visits, I guess cause of the demand there is on their work. At least where I live.
But I can't take it with doctors man. Also it's the only business where you can pay to get insulted or diminished, yet not diagnosed, repeatedly from different specialists (true story)
How many other businesses would be fine with operating like this
The Apple Store, for starters.
Ticketmaster, also, too.
Went to my appointment Friday, was told my primary stopped working Fridays 2 months ago. They were the one who scheduled the appointment 3 months ago
Last time i was a the doctors office, my appointment was at 11. At 11:45 i was still waiting and i heard them laugh in the break room 😑...
My favorite was my psychologist who knows I'm autistic and routine and schedule is everything to me. Then doesn't show up for 30 minutes and then call me saying their previous appointment went on longer than expected... this happened almost every other appointment. Eventually i quit because it gave me more anxiety and stress than the trauma's i was dealing with. 🤦🏻