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.
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.
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.
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.
Why even work with private equity then?
Why is it so hard for a group of doctors to set up their own practice?
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.
Trex nailed it in their reply. And doctors do set up their own practices-- and every successful practice has been bought out.
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?
Found Larry David’s Lemmy account
Coincidentally, people say I look like Larry. Personally, I think I look pretty, pretty, uuhh pretty good.
Found eric andré’s account!
Ranch it up
That’s “I, America, ‘n’ Dre”.
I’ve had the same observation before. They insist you’re there early, and don’t really care if they make you wait an hour or more past your appointment time. But if you’re there 5 minutes late? Appointment canceled, pay $50.
Once had an appointment where the doctor was an hour behind, so I was just waiting in a room, then they billed that as extra time spent on the appointment
It’s so great here!
I give them 5 minutes unless there’s an emergency, then it’s 15. After that I reschedule, or move to a different doctor.
Any practice that can’t keep a schedule, isn’t worth working with. Worst case scenario, take a vacation to Mexico and talk to a doctor there. Cheaper, faster, and probably better care than a US general practitioner.
Many years ago I had an orthopoedic surgeon that was always late. 30-40 minutes ofttimes. Yes, it was an inconvenience, but first appointment with him this happened, I was irritated about it until he got in the room. He was contrite and apologetic and had incredibly good bedside manners. He spoke to you and not dismissively down as many docs can. He listened completely to what I had to say and welcomed questions. All of this ended up taking much longer than a normal get in/out physician. Now I understood why and accepted his tardiness as I wanted that extra care he so readily dispensed. Great doctor, but now long retired.
Good doctors often have more incentive to overbook, and even less incentive to stop bad office practices as long as people keep putting up with it.
That’s reasonable if it’s regular- of course, with healthcare being expensive, I’m not surprised that even when it’s not a complex issue that takes time, the patient might decide to offload a dozen issues at once instead of making a dozen appointments- making this a structural issue, not specific to your doctor.
Our pediatrician from years ago left the group practice he was in to do his own thing, partially so he could get away from the numbers game and have longer appointment slots so time could be taken to address any concerns that come up. Actually talk to the patient. Great doctor. He first impressed us when he brought us in the room, then talked to our son first.
He ended up retiring after a lot of years simply because he couldn’t afford to do it the “right” way any longer.
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.
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.
It’s possible that you filled a No Show slot
That’s absolutely what happened
Hopefully the doctor was able to degast your flabbers!
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
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.
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.
Depending on where you are in the world, and how much of this is coming out of pocket, this is either really good or pretty bad.
