Me: 30 minutes past my appointment (after arriving 20 minutes early) watching people walk in then get called back within 3 minutes. Fuck doctors offices so much.
Update: Nurse took me to the room. Answered prelim questions then she left. Still waiting for the doctor 20 minutes later. It is now 40 minutes past my appointment time and no sign of the person taking my money.
It really is infuriating. Especially when you get threatening reminders like ‘be sure to be here exactly on time or we’ll bill you/yell at you’.
I show for everything at least 20 minutes early at the latest. Meanwhile I’ve had scheduled appointments run 45 minutes late.
Clearly they expect me respect THEIR time, while completely disrespecting mine.
The real problem with this is inaccurate blood pressure readings.
Run a social psych experiment. Tell 100 people to show up and claim a $10 gift card. They must arrive 15 mins early. They will receive their $10 at a specific time.
Randomize the 100 people’s actual receipt time to be somewhere between 5 mins early and 45 mins late.
Come in, explain they just need to do a blood pressure reading first, and then they will receive the $10.
Had the fun of waiting 60min for my appointment (I was 10min early).
Feel youOne time I had a cold and needed to see the doc because of work.
Got an appointment for later during consultation hours and was misreable in the hallway because 15 other patients were waiting before me.
Later went back, was led into an examination room and had again to wait 30min until the doc came to examine me.
I waited 120min with a misreable cold in the hallway with several other sick humans (very great) during cold season.
I know the practice is overworked but cmon ;-;I had an appointment at 11am last week. They saw me at 3.30pm. One of the guys waiting had sandwiches with him, he’d obviously been there before…
You guys need better doctors jfc
It’s the for-profit American health system
that’s why 2/3 of the population has no GP and is just using urgent care. No appt, cheaper to the insurance, they still see you faster than the actual appointment
Cheaper to the insurance in the short term. More expensive for everyone in the long term since nobody bothers with preventative care anymore.
you are fined if you don’t cancel in less than 24 hours notice or maybe 48 but we cancel after you get there and pay no renumeration for it. lol.
They are optimizing for Doctor’s time, not yours. He is the one being paid to be there. Your wait is free.
My wait is not free, if I’m not at work I’m losing money, I’m not taking care of things at home, I’m not doing who knows what else I could be doing. The wasting of my time is not free.
If anything, MY time should be prioritized because I’m the one PAYING to be here.
It’s not free to you, but you’re not the one scheduling the appointments.
Is that how a proper society works.
in civilised countries this is a good idea as patients have a nasty habit of not turning up
Some doctors are always late. Some are occasionally late. Some are only late at the end of their shift. If yours is always late and cancels your appointment unless you show up early, they don’t respect your time. Get a new doctor. Their front desk should be able to cope with you showing up near your real appointment time.
I’ve recently had several appointments with a specialist. Most of them required me to show up between 0615 and 0630.
He doesn’t come in until 0800.
Had a doc that was chronically late. One day he shows up after the nurse had us sit in the room for about 40 mins and during the appointment all this water comes out of his nose. Said he likes to go for a swim during his lunch break.
He’s living the life
Chances are he makes a salary that puts him on the sophisticated idiot category
The doctors that are late to the appointment are late because they are taking the extra time to listen to and treat their patients. Private equity firms have standardized back to back appointments of 15 minutes for every patient, and enforce that every slot be filled. It is not possible to provide adequate healthcare in that timeframe. Every good doctor I’ve worked with is always on time to the first appointment, and later and later as the day goes on. Every scum bag doctor I’ve worked with was on time to every appointment, and never really treated a single patient. Be mad at private equity, not the doctors doing a good job.
But as doctors, was there no fight back against this. I don’t know how. But genuinely asking. Like if a plumbers knew some new law came in that endangered people and they just went with it, are they not responsible
When this became the norm, they had little recourse. At the moment, there’s a crazy shortage; they could stand against it now. But there’s already too few doctors to see people, Trying to see less people to make it more convenient would go against trying to help people when there aren’t enough doctors as it is
If you were right about this, most every doctor I’ve seen is good. They definitely aren’t though. The reverse has been true in my experience. One doctor had me wait 2 hours past the appointment time, then, shocker, wasted a lot more of my time and money, and my problem was never addressed. He never even seemed to understand what the problem was (and he should have, I explained it several times). He referred me to a doctor that was literally in the process of retiring and said he told the referring doctor this. The story gets even longer but suffice it to say I wasted thousands of dollars and several hours for nothing. And this was consistent with my experience other places too. Unreasonable wait times have occurred alongside really terrible doctors for me.
I’ve had a doctor literally come out into the waiting room and sit down and talk golf and stocks with someone for 30 minutes during my appointment time. Other times I’ve been the first appointment in the morning and the doctor has come in 30-40 minutes late anyway. A couple of times I could hear them in the hallway having a friendly chat with someone about something that has nothing to do with patients or the practice. None of my doctors are part of private equity companies and all have 20 minute appointment times.
There’s no question that many doctors are decent, but a full 50% of them are below average.
Why even work with private equity then?
Why is it so hard for a group of doctors to set up their own practice?
True story… I used to go to a fairly large physician owned clinic network. They sold out to optum. Now care gets worse every year. Luigi, you listening buddy?
Trex nailed it in their reply. And doctors do set up their own practices-- and every successful practice has been bought out.
Private equity needs to be heavily, restrictively regulated. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they are a caustic and exploitative market influence pretty much across the board if they’re given even the tiniest bit of leash.
Private Equity takes care of all the legwork; rent, admin, staff, patient flow. Not that groups can’t do this, it’s outsourced so that they can see more patients and bill more, ironically reducing patient care because profit.
yes. insurance companies in particular are too much for independent doctors to negotiate with. they would rather pay $100 for a shitty appointment where nothing is solved than $200 where something is actually done about the problem (such as treatments or tests, which they would also probably have to pay for).
Once they see you they’ll be there 12m and charge you for an hour.
Fuck our medical system.
Depends on who you are, what your health is like, and why you’re there. 5 complex medical conditions needing management? I might be reviewing 50 pages of notes, labs, imaging, etc before I see you. Then I gotta figure out an overall plan, how to execute that plan, what to do if that plan fails, write my note, etc etc etc. known patient for a quick f/u on one or two issues? That still might include chart review, specialist notes, labs, etc etc etc. you have the sniffles and you’re fine and just need a note? 5 minutes. All depends.
I spent days (weeks really, but a couple solid days right beforehand) prepping for an appointment that was crucial to my health and life in general. Not overstating that: the meeting determined for how much longer I have to live a half of a life due to this condition.
The doc misremembered a few things, made determinations based on that misunderstanding, and left mid sentence. I have now spent weeks trying to clear up what would have taken another 10m to do in person.
You sound like one of the good ones, so keep fighting the good fight.
But it’s still a shit system. The goals are simply misaligned from the top down. Money is the goal, not care.
And they’ll write on their notes they had a conversation with you about _____ because they uttered the correct incantation.
Let’s be honest, when was the last time anyone actually saw a doctor when they were scheduled to?
Kind of wish we could walk out and send them a “cancelled appointment fee” after 15 minutes.
I had an allergy reaction test with my son last week. It’s a two hours test where he eats an increasingly bigger portion of allergen to see if he is still allergic.
We arrive 15 mins early for our scheduled start at 9:15. We are the first of the day for the test. 9:55 we finally see the doctor. The first appointment of the day starts late by 40 mins.
The appointment before that one, we were scheduled at 10:00. By 11:45, we still haven’t seen the doctor to start the two hour test. And I’m being told that this is normal by a nurse.
Just fucking infuriating all around.
A few weeks ago, for the first time in my life, they got to my appointment EARLY. And not just 30 seconds early. I’m talking 20 minutes. I was flabbergasted.
Hopefully the doctor was able to degast your flabbers!
It’s possible that you filled a No Show slot
That’s absolutely what happened
First, YSK that doctors’ offices overbook patients. Most of the time, the doctor takes less time with you than he schedules. He’s got a lot of people to help (and money to make). But if he’s not helping you, he’s not your doctor and it’s time to find another one. If he checks you out, gives you a prescription, and sends you on your merry way and it works, don’t feel dismissed, he did his job efficiently.
People who break appointments cost the office money, so I get where they’re coming from. It’s still bullshit. If there were more doctors, the load would be spread more evenly and they wouldn’t do that, but there aren’t (in many areas) so that’s what you get. Not that it’s fair.
One time, my wife waited 4 hours to be seen by her doctor. I waited for an hour with her, then I started feeling unwell, so I walked home (only about a 20 minute walk, and the breeze felt awesome). She was there from 9 until noon, when they went to lunch. They all went out to eat at a nice restaurant while my wife waited. When they got back an hour later, they saw her. I thought that was messed up. But my wife likes her doctor and stayed with the practice. Couldn’t be me. I give it half an hour tops.
As for me, I usually arrive at appointments five minutes early to on time. Usually have to wait no more than 15 minutes. AirPods are great for this. “But what if they call your name?” iPhone has a feature where it will listen for your name. You don’t even have to look at them. The music dips, you hear a ding, you look at the phone, and it says “Urgent message: Maybe heard (your name).” You have to tell it your first name, your last name, and anything else you want it to listen for. This also eats battery because it’s listening constantly — this is something you would not leave on all the time. But, I figure everyone’s got a charger in the car, so it’s no big deal. As for Android users… there might be an app for it. I dunno. Android absolutely wins when it comes to customisation of the home screen, but iPhone wins on accessibility features. There are, like, hundreds in there. One I use (and it came in clutch after having some oral surgery) is personal voice, where you can make it talk for you in your voice. It’s a parlour trick until you need it, then it’s indispensable.
First, YSK that doctors’ offices overbook patients.
From first hand experience, I can tell you that this isn’t the case everywhere.
