Oh, those doctors, with their smug, self-important tendency to keep you stuck in waiting rooms while they play Tetris and check their Facebook. The New York Times has a remedy for what ails you, providing advice on how to get back at doctors who keep you waiting:
*If your doc makes a habit of tardiness, dump him.
*Hunt for a physicians group like this that guarantees appointment times.
*Ask for a discount if you’re kept waiting.
*Complain directly to your doctor and/or whine about the wait times online.
What have you done to minimize medical wait times? I opt to just accept them as a fact of life and rely on my DSi to keep me distracted.
Punishing Doctors Who Make You Wait [The New York Times]
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I perform my prostate exams at home.
On just yourself, or…
I cannot pulverize my own kidney stones.
Hey, a kindred spirit! I do my own colonoscopies with a sigmoidoscope I made myself from garden hose and the guts of an old camcorder.
Lifehacker has such great projects!
Can I borrow that? I’ve been using my cell phone’s camera, and it really makes phone calls unpleasant.
A new use for Face Time! Call 1-888-PEEK-ANUS with your iPhone 4 to test out the new colonoscopy feature!
Your phone number almost made me choke! Lmfao!
What’s your phone number?
How YOU doin’?
And in a related story, your wife allows me to perform her mammograms at your home, too!
Then what am I paying the mailman for?
Complain too loudly and they’ll make a note in your chart about you being a problem patient.
If I recall correctly, you mean “Difficult”
Isn’t that just a myth perpetuated by an episode of Seinfeld?
No, I requested a copy of my file when I switched Drs. a while back. It really pissed me off reading all the little notes in my file. Not that they were bad, but they were unnecessary and unprofessional.
I’m just astonished they gave you the file WITH the little notes. As any attorney who does malpractice cases can tell you, there’s a lot of addition and subtraction that goes on with medical files when somebody else gets to see them.
Examples please. Not that I don’t believe you, but they have GOT to be entertaining! ; )
I seem to remember it was an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.
As well as Seinfeld… which I imagine to be more memorable to the masses.
Okay, so it was observed by Larry David, meet halfway.
Keep complaining and they make you wait longer.
Then FIRE the sucker.
Why does that matter? It isn’t like they ever read the chart anyway! I have had to tell so many nurses to not tell me my weight and deal with their strange looks before they ever get the sense to look down and realize I am at the office because I have anorexia (and that such specificatons like the numbers issue are all written on the top page of my file).
Also, I don’t think I have ever spent less than 30 minutes in a waiting room. The wait in the actual examining room is usually another 30 minutes.
Get appointments as early in the day as possible. These are less likely to be disrupted by emergencies.
Also, BE HONEST when you schedule your appointments about what your ailment is. A lot of reasons that doctors get off track is because patient A says they are suffering from X but then they bring up Y and Z at the last second. Sure honestly scheduling appts doesn’t help you minimize wait times, but it helps the person after you.
This. I’ve found most of my wait times with my PCP was because of running over with previous patients that came in for something simple & ended up having a host of issues. That was also part of the reason I saw this doctor – instead of rushing patient encounters to see the next patient, she took the time required to address all concerns. The downside was running perpetually late.
The way my insurance is set up, they require each issue to be addressed in a SEPARATE APPOINTMENT. I am not joking. I went in for something and I mentioned something else and the NP I was dealing with said I’d have to make another appointment for that because if it was done all at once my insurance wouldn’t cover the second issue I had.
The doctor I saw in Canada was always running 15-20 minutes late, but at least he was consistent which made planning a little easier. I did always make a point to schedule appointments on days off or get the day off when I knew I had an appointment.
That sounds like some kind of commie socialism for the doctors office.
If they want us to be honest then they can’t cut us off when explaining the issue.
I had that problem with one doctor’s office. Apparently, they only wanted to hear one symptom per visit and immediately talked over you if you tried to say anything else.
I believe Dr.’s call those doorknob problems/questions. It’s when the patient waits until your hand is on the doorknob to spring it.
I have no issues with my current doctor. She doesn’t over book – and she takes her time with patients… occasionally she runs over about 15 mins into my appointment but she takes her time with me as well. I don’t see too many complaints from the other patients either.
Plus she has a flat screen TV in the waiting room with cable and up to date reading material… which her staff wipes down with disinfectant wipes. Plus she’s from Africa and has a cool accent.
My last doctor before I moved, if I had an appointment later in the day, I would sometimes get a call from the receptionist around lunch time letting me know that they were rescheduling me from 2:30 to 3pm, since they had fallen behind. I really appreciated that better than showing up at 2:15, and waiting..
My new doctor, 2000 miles away.. his office expects you to call if you are running late.. They don’t extend the same courtesy.
Or worse… they can charge you for missed appointments.
I’ve been in officers where there’s a 2-3 hour wait and some people have to run to work after and they end up missing the appointment and they are told there will be a $35 fee billed to them.
When I was in my accident, I had to see a surgeon to asses whether or not I needed surgery – everyone told me “better bring a couple of books.” I shit you not – the standard wait time in the office was 3-5 hours. The good thing is, there was fair warning – and they had a 5 disc DVD changer.
you should absolutely not pay a missed appointment fee if you are there on time and they keep you waiting. in a perfect world you could charge them a missed appt fee, since you were the one left with a hole in your schedule, but that will never happen
Oh I agree – but it’s on the list of the “random fees” doctors want to charge these days….
If a doctor’s office tried to charge a missed appointment charge, when I was sitting out in their waiting room during the time of my appointment and I had to leave after waiting a reasonable time?
I would wait for the bill, dispute it with a certified letter, and if they took any other steps to collect that missed appointment charge would charge them for the missed appointment, taking them to small claims court and loudly inform the media.
If the appointment was at 3:00, and you were there at 3:00 but the doctor wasn’t ready and you stuck around as long as you could, you should raise holy hell if they charge you a missed appointment fee. I know I would. Shoot, I’d be tempted to sue the doctor in small claims court for the same amount.
However, the missed appointment fee is a good thing when used properly. A doctor can have twenty patients scheduled each day. Typically, two or three of those will be no shows. But some days there might be only ten patients honoring the appointment, and other days twenty, making it seem like one day is underbooked, and the next overbooked. If a doctor needs to see 18 patients a day to stay in business, he can’t schedule only 18, because it’d be a rare day when all 18 actually showed up.
The PCP I had 3 or 4 PCPs ago (which was only about 3 yrs ago) was part of the family practice where I’m still a patient. One day I had an appt late in the afternoon, however he was running about an hr or hr and a half late. One of the other doctors in the practice saw me instead, which was fine by me but I’m sure would have sent another patient thermonuclear.
That would be awesome. I love my doctor dearly, but the office staff, especially the receptionists, leaves a lot to be desired.
sounds like a pedatrician that my wife is friends with… cute as a button, sweet as jelly bean, and rocking an awesome south african accent.
the kid’s love her…
I couldn’t agree more. My wife was a medical assistant for years, and in her experience it was mostly slow docs that were holding things up. She had one she worked for that was late every single day, pushing the schedule back every single day. It drove her crazy as she couldn’t leave until the doc was done, most times an hour or more past the time she was supposed to be done.
Yes she was getting paid for it, but it makes it impossible to plan anything on a weeknight and takes away time with the family. Not to mention the inconvenience to the patients, who of course took it out on my wife instead of the doc most of the time.
Are you kidding? Doctors are slow because not only do they have patients to deal with in person, but they also have paper work, emails from patients, calls from patients, plus they have to keep abreast of current research and producers in medicine. I’m sure there are many more things too.
What the heck is everyone complaining about. Maybe you should try being a doctor for a day.
Damn, are YOU kidding? It’s called a schedule man. Docs know what they do in a day, and it doesn’t take much effort to organize it. Most simply don’t make the effort. You obviously have no experience in this area. As I said, my wife was working with docs for over 10 years, and no, not the same one. She had many experiences with many different docs as I said. Get a clue and maybe actually know what you are talking about before you spout off.
Right but, you missed my point. Those things are not scheduled, they come up ad hoc. As in, if a patient calls with a problem, it’s not going to be on the schedule.
I didn’t mean to spout off at you, sorry. It was more a general annoyance with this whole thread and everyone’s complaints. I just don’t think that they know the reality of how much work a doctor has in an outpatient situation.
And yes, I have worked in the medical industry before.
I posted a negative review of my (now former) dental office on Yelp.
That’s how I actually found my current dentist–whom I love.
I vented about my former PCP on Yelp as well. The original draft was 1,300 words, but I had to trim it down to fit.
Get the first appt of the day or the first one following their lunch.
Or you can also call ahead to find out if they are running on time.
I switched doctors a number of years ago because of this. It was really, really bad. The final straw:
I arrived, and could just tell it was busy. I asked if it was going to be more than two hours (no joke) and, if it was, I’d rebook. They said to have a seat.
Two hours later, I ask if I should rebook. Their reply? “You’re next”. Sure enough… next to be plunked in a little room, where I waited another hour. At this point, having missed 1/2-day of work, I waited it out.
Afterword, I complained to the office manager. She gave me a song and dance about being busy, blah blah… and I said, “I understand. I didn’t ask to be moved ahead; I asked if I should *rebook* the appointment.” She was dumbfounded.
One of the doctors at that practice had left about a year ago. He was really cool; I tracked him down and started to see him. A few visits in, he confessed he left the other practice because they did crap like that. They had no sense of scheduling.
Now it’s rare to wait more than 10 minutes. They actually have signs up that say “if it’s been more than 15 minutes please come tell us.”
I had a similar experience. I signed up with a doctor that’s right down the street from my office, about a 3 minute drive. However, I was never seen by the doctor within one hour of my scheduled appointment. One day I walked in, saw that it was busy but waited anyway. After about an hour I left and never looked back.
I now have a doctor that is about 35 minutes away from my office, and an hour from my house, but I’ve never waited more than 10 minutes to see the doc. If I have an appointment during work hours, it’s actually faster to see the doctor 35 minutes away than it is the one just down the street.
Gee— I WALKED OUT when it was 30 minutes PAST my appointment.
Walk out — Easy peasy.
Some doctors have a cancellation fee if you don’t cancel before 24 hours of your appointment.
Yeah, but you’re not the one who canceled the appointment. The doctor being to busy to see you is not the same thing as you just not showing up.
I’m sure they’d try to argue it’s the same thing but they can’t charge you for being late or missing an appointment and expect no repercussions for not keeping the appointment themselves.
Just inform them of your policy of charging a fee if the doctor is more than 60 minutes late in getting to your appointment….
Perhaps make the fee equal to the fee they charge for cancellations?
Not so easy when most doctors now make you pay the co-pay when you sign in, and have cancellation fees if you don’t show up or walk out.
Sounds like you need a new doctor. I pay, but only after services are rendered. If they’re not willing to wait an hour even after they have your name, address, phone, workplace, insurance, SSN, etc, you gotta wonder what they’re so afraid of.
About 9 years ago I walked out of an office. Waited an hour, complaining at 30 minutes and 45 minutes. Watched as people walked in were seen ahead of me. Next day I got a call from my insurance that actually asked if I went to my appointment or not. I didn’t get any info out of them after explaining the story, but I surmise the doctors office tried to bill a visit anyway.
Nope. I stood there (admittedly awkwardly) as she processed my Refund — Then walked out. She also had the nerve to tell me I should have “expected to wait longer than the appointment time” — I hope they fail.
I’ve walked out before too. I’ve done it with 2 different doctors, neither office now makes me wait for more than 5 minutes any more. I arrive to the office and I’m called almost right away.
Yeah. I do this. After 1 hour wait I will go up to the receptionist and tell them that I can no longer meet the doctor today and that I’ll have to reschedule. It actually works. Next time I am not kept waiting longer than 15 minutes.
Oh, and if you need to pay the co-pay prior to the appointment, always do it by check and ask for it back when you reschedule.
YOUR ICON IS AWESOME
I got up and asked 15 mins past my appt what the deal was, they said “just a couple more mins” – 30 mins after that I stood up and said “If I’m not in there with him in the next 10 minutes, I’m leaving and you’ll get my bill.”
10 mins later I’m in the room – no doc – I told them he had 5 mins to come in or I was leaving. 5 mins later, I left – told them I’d be sending them my bill for my time.
I sent the Dr. a bill for my hourly rate (3 figures), plus time to/from his office + transportation costs (per mile at the IRS rate) + time to wait past the “gimmie” 15 minutes + time in the office wasted. When he balked, I sent it to a collection agency.
Got my money. Changed doctors. The one I have now is ON-TIME, and when he’s not – they call before the appt to let you know, see what you want to do…. apparently this new guy is getting a lot of business because he’s on time…
You are a hero.
When I was with Kaiser Permanente (sp?), every doctor I went to was ALWAYS late. For example, my PCD…set up a first opening appointment for 8am, arrive at 7:45am…do all the paper work, pay co-pay and so on…wait….and wait….and wait….see my doctor walk in at 8:40am! and I don’t get seen until 9:00am! And she spends like less than 5 minutes with me and out the door I go
It’s hard to ask for a discount on co-pay because that’s the set agreed price between you and the insurance carrier. Seeing a specialist was also the same way. Always expect your doctor to be late for your appointment, but of course if you are late to yours or miss out on your appointment then it’s a fine for you 
geez.
Where was this at? The KP office me and my wife use they are always on time and even when my wife called once over something small they told her to come in and they saw her 5 minutes after she got there.
That and having nurses on the call center line is nice. My wife went into labor but wanted to doubel check if she REALLY needed to go in as I was packing her stuff and getting ready and telling her to get off the phone and lets go.
That is not anything new. Many, many years ago, when I was 19, I had an appointment to see an ob/gyn and sat for a hour in the exam room. Mind you, I was all ready for the doctor (undressed, sitting in the paper excuse for a covering), and those rooms are so frickin’ cold!
About half an hour into waiting, I tried to make myself as decent as possible and peeked out to ask a nurse nearby if it would be much longer for the doctor. She just looked at me with a deer in the headlights type look, glanced down at her paperwork and mumbled “Soon”. So I waited a little bit more, and when it got to be an hour, I dressed and walked out just as the doctor was getting ready to walk down the hall to her office.
I demanded my copay back, which the receptionist handed to me with a not so surprised look on her face. Just as I was getting ready to walk out, the doctor comes running up to me, asking me who do I think I am walking out on her. I turned and asked her who she thought she was making me wait an hour, making me lose pay (no sick time, no vacation time as it was a sole proprietorship company I worked for), and also making me late for work. She couldn’t say anything, only stand there looking like a fish with her mouth opening and closing.
I still lived with my parents at the time and it was my dad’s insurance that covered me, so when I got home that night, I told them and he suggested I write a complaint to the business office.
Three weeks later, I got a call from the business office asking how much I made an hour and how many hours did I lose because of waiting. A week later, I had a check in my hand in compensation for the problem I had.
I waited an hour because I was used to waiting in the urgent care clinics (I was a frequent visitor since I tended to have a lot of problems with ear infections and strep until I finally out grew them), so I figured this was the norm. I know better now. My doctor only makes me wait if she’s handling not only her patients and her colleague’s patients if they’re on vacation.
Awesome. I’d love to bill people for my usual hourly rate in these situations!
I have similar problems with Kaiser. Kaiser sets standards for the length of appointments, and the appointments are scheduled according to their standards. My primary care doc (who is a very good doctor, btw) can work within the Kaiser standard and generally stay on time. But every specialist I see that is actually a good doctor will be running at least an hour late by the end of the day. I had more than one of them tell me it was because of the standard appointment length, and if they could schedule their own appointments, they’d spread them out further.
I’ve gotten very good care for a lot less money than if I had different insurance, so I put up with the waits.
My Doc is horrible about this, so I started showing up 15 minutes late.
The receptionist balked last time and I pointed out that every time I’ve been here the doctor has kept me waiting at least 20 minutes so techinically I was early. She got snotty, and I said my time was just as valuable as his and walked away.
I stay because he’s a great doctor BUT when I schedule my appointments I expect them to be on time just as much he expects me to be on time.
I once sent a doctor a “bill” for the time I spent waiting in his lobby, which was usually 45 minutes to an hour. He deducted the total from what I owed him and apologized for the delays. After that I never had to wait more than 10 minutes.
Wow…just wow… never thought someone would have the balls to do that…good job!
I never thought that would work!
you are my hero.
I have invoiced a cable company for my time before (and received compensation through free setup, and first month free), but have never had the guts to go after someone I do repeatable business with.
Accidental delays are fine by me. If a doctor overbooks once in a while or has patients taking longer than expected, I can live with that. What gets me are doctors who do this every single time. I take ADHD medication, and by law I have to return in person every two months for a prescription refill. The visit literally takes five minutes — I go in, he asks if everything’s the same, I say yes, he writes the scrip, and I leave. My previous doctor a few years ago kept me waiting an hour each time (for a five minute visit), and the waiting room was filled with others on long waits. So I switched to a different doctor who was great about in-and-out for a while… but now he’s doing the same thing. Look, if I book a 3pm appointment and you know you won’t be able to see me until 3:45, then just schedule me for 3:45! Don’t have me show up on time then sit around and wait. (At least one of my other doctors admits to overbooking and tells us to call an hour ahead of the schedule time to see when we should actually show up.)
Damn schedule 2 prescriptions. `
Federal law allows for 90 days’ supply on Schedule 2 prescriptions. State law might be more restrictive.
In NJ, IIRC, a Sched 2 prescription can not be more than 30 days old, and they aren’t allowed to pre-write.
My doctor is often 30-60 minutes behind by the end of the day, but I stick with him. Why, because he’s just that good of a doctor when it comes to talking to you and listening to what you say and actually treating his patients like people, instead of money-making cattle. I don’t know if the slowness is overbooking, or if it’s just that he takes time with his patients, and they try to work as many people in during the day as possible, to the point that he loses time throughout the day.
I’ve gotten around this by making sure I schedule morning appointments early in the morning and I rarely wait longer than 10-15 minutes.
Before I started college, I had to have a form filled out and signed by my doctor. I was left waiting over 6 hours and still didn’t get it signed despite practically begging her rude, incompetent staff. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I needed that form to start school.
After getting an absolute last-minute emergency appointment with another doctor, I checked the state board of medicine to see if there were any complaints or anything against her. Sure enough, the board had disciplined her for writing prescriptions to herself for painkillers or something like that. It was a small town, and I made sure that got around.
Usually you can drop those forms off and pick them up a few days later.
I don’t remember it that well, but for some reason, that was not an option. All she had to do was sign the freaking form, anyway.
Signing a form means a lot more than you might think. Seriously. Since I’m a surgeon, I don’t have to do clearances for work nearly as often as, say, a family practice doc, but I’ve known so, so many colleagues who have had “just a simple form” come back to bite them in the end. Bear in mind that for every crowd of people who “just needs a form signed”, there’s a couple people who are trying to get that physician’s signature on the form for the sake of doing something they shouldn’t be doing, which can and often will lead to legal issues.
Therefore, you understand when the majority of physicians get irritated when people say, “You just need to sign a form!” It’s a lot bigger than that, and we’re not going to put our careers on the line, though you, obviously, are free to do what you like.
You showed up without an appointment trying to get a free service from the physician and were treated rudely by her staff, so you did your best to ruin her personal and professional lives? This was, after all, a small town. I think you overreacted big time.
It’s not a free service. I had an appointment and my insurance was paying for it. I was there first, got my physical and vaccines, and was told to wait to get the form back. Instead of filling out a form, which would take 60 seconds, TOPS, she went to the next patient, who decided on the spot she wanted some boil drained or something (Yes, the staff told me what was going on, isn’t that classy? Probably a HIPAA violation, but I digress.) and proceeding to make me and many other people wait and wait and wait.
What she should have done was fill out the form while in the room with me and send me on my way, and then tell the next patient she’d have to make a new appointment for her stupid elective surgery, because other people were waiting.
If you had an appointment, I can understand why you would be so angry. I used to work in a medical office, and we would see patients all the time who would just walk in and demand services such as “just sign this real quick”, regardless of whether they had an appointment. I assumed you were one of those people, but obviously you aren’t and that doctor was grossly incompetent at customer service.
Read her comment. She never said she didn’t have an appointment.
Never mind
You guys worked it all out. Very rare here!
Except it’s not just “signing a freaking form.” Assuming it was the standard university health form, it’s a legally binding document on which a physician’s signature is considered to be an official statement of your current health and vaccination status. For your doctor to sign the form in good conscience, she would need to go over your medical records in some detail, at the very least, and possibly call you in for a physical and a couple of shots as well. That’s why most doctors ask you to leave forms with them: they can take your chart home overnight, spend half an hour looking through it, fill out the relevant information, book any necessary additional appointments, then have you pick up the completed form once everything is ready. (Incidentally, who do you think pays doctors for doing that? That’s right: nobody, unless they charge the patient a token fee for their time).
It sounds to me like you left things until the last possible minute, then waltzed into the doctor’s office assuming she would either a) drop everything she was doing immediately so she could go through your chart, or b) sign it without even looking at it, risking her professional reputation and possibly facing disciplinary action for making false statements. You probably gave her “incompetent” staff a heaping helping of attitude, too, venting your rage at the world not revolving around you. Then, when you failed to browbeat your health care provider into giving you special treatment, you retaliated by digging up completely unrelated dirt on her, and shouting it from the rooftops.
Grow up.
Maybe you should read before you comment. I made an appointment, and the only reason it was last minute is because she was so overbooked that was the only time I could GET. It was either that, or get an entirely new doctor, which I ended up having to do anyway. The majority of the form was for ME to fill out, which I already did. I was left waiting for hours solely because her and her staff are rude, incompetent, and disorganized.
I should also note it wasn’t just me that was left waiting, but the majority of her morning appointments, most of which walked out, because they could.
Having waited weeks for an appointment and hours in a waiting room, I was more than patient. If you think that is reasonable behavior for health care “professionals”, you have problems.
I think the important thing is to understand WHY the doctor is running late. Yeah, if they are goofing off or intentionally overbook, that’s one thing. But I have a doctor who sometimes runs over because she won’t let any patient leave until they have all of their questions answered and understands everything that is going on. Sometimes that takes a while and sometimes it doesn’t. But knowing that I am getting the same great care as her other patients is worth waiting for.
I went to an eye doctor and after the typical 1 hour wait in the waiting room, I was led to an exam room, where I had to wait again.
While I sat there for another hour, I could hear the doctor in the office next to me MAKING MARKETING CALLS for a multi-level marketing scheme selling some sort of “holistic” supplements. It was every bit as bizarre as you could imaging:
“The best part is the way to make the most money is to sign up more salespeople in your downline under you, then you don’t have to do any work and they make all the money for you!”
I switched doctors after that.
Oh, those doctors, with their smug, self-important tendency to keep you stuck in waiting rooms
Delicate geniuses…all of them!
Just hope you don’t have to cancel less than 24 hours before your appointment to drive your mother to the chiropodist.
I had to look that one up. Here in ‘murica, he’s called a podiatrist.
If my doctor keeps me waiting for more than 30 minutes in “waiting room B”, I steal small medical consumables like band-aids and Qtips.
When one has free healthcare, one shouldn’t complain too much about wait times. I’d rather spend an hour in my Doctor’s air conditioned office with magazines and wi-fi than in some overcrowded clinic or ER somewhere.
There is no such thing as “free” healthcare, by any measure.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch
$15 copay for office visits. That’s it. That’s about as close to free as one can get.
Welcome to the wonderful world of government employment.
Just because I pay for it and not you doesn’t make it “free”.
Actually, he does pay for it, indirectly. His salary is lower because he gets a certain level of benefits.
WOW! you have free health care? where do you get that? I pay dearly every month from my paycheck into my insurance…I then pay a co-pay, and then pay for Rx. I pay, and they bill my insurance…I understand that an appointment will usually involve a bit of a wait…I have worked in a doctor’s office i know how it works…but more than 45 minutes is unreasonable.
Free healthcare? How does that happen? Surely some ‘Socialist’ made that happen for you…
I took my cat to the vet recently. Having him weighed and looked at by the tech took about 6 minutes. Having him looked at and vaccinated by the vet took about 10 minutes.
In between, I waited 31 minutes. My cat thought he was going to die because of all the dogs he heard. I returned my Zipcar 12 minutes late and got a $50 fine (refunded, though, after explaining what happened).
I accept that wait times are the flip side of being able to get same-day appointments.
Interestingly, when I make a same-day appointment at my PCP, I never have to wait more than 30 minutes. It’s because I’m seeing a NP or PA, not a doctor.
I can usually get same day appointments with my current doctor, but with my last three there was no such thing. No matter how sick I was, there was no way I was getting an appointment for at least a month, usually longer. They used to let me see the PA for same-day appointments, but eventually they decided that no one could see the PA without getting a referral from the doctor first, and to do that you had to leave a message with the doctor’s nurse, which usually means waiting at least a day, maybe two, to hear anything back at all. Then by the time the doctor decides to let me see the PA, I’m either not sick anymore or I have already been to the urgent care center and the problem has been taken care of. I wonder what exactly the point of having a “family doctor” is if they will never see you when you’re actually sick?
Primary care physicians are in a shortage….so wait times are going up as more and more medical students decide to go into specialty where they will make the funds to pay those student loans.
Specialists, ESPECIALLY surgeons are going to have longer wait times. I work for an ENT practice. One day you can come in and wait 5 minutes and get seen…another you can wait for an hour. Just depends on what we get in that day. Sometimes you get a nose bleed or a broken nose and that throws us back. Please be patient with the office staff. 9 times out of 10 its not our fault.
Well… if you weren’t drunk and full of pills then maybe things could be timely.
This is why I do my best to get along with the office staff. Little treats, pleasantries while waiting, understanding noises when it gets busy…let me tell you, I adore my present doctor’s office staff, and try to show it. They, in turn, are extra awesome to me and my family. Need a same day appointment? If it is before 3:45 pm, no problem. (After that, it gets a little dicey, but our clinic has evening hours, too.)
So. The moral of this story? Make friends with the office staff. They will be more accommodating that way.
Waiting a long time is a drag, but consider: it’s a medical practice, not a muffler shop. Unless you live in an under-served area, chances are that your doctor is busy because s/he is good at the work. What do you think when you walk into a restaurant on Friday night and see no one at the tables? There’s a reason the joint is empty. Same rules apply.
agreed
Busy does not necessarily mean “good”… they may be the only doctor in 50 or so miles that is “in network” for your health insurance.
Yep, that’s the “under-served” part.
Wait – people have money to go to the Doctor? Seriously?
I had a doctor who was constantly overbooked.
I complained to the doctor herself, but it didn’t help, her staff kept overbooking.
I would stand out in the hallway just staring, that usually got someone to see me quickly.
The final straw was waiting 4 hours passed my appointment time and still didn’t get into a waiting room.
This doctor was constantly overbooked because she saw people without insurance and gave perscription meds out at her office, she was a great doc but my time was worth more than that.
Ask that doctor how much her overhead is per hour, and how much, on average, she gets reimbursed for each patient.
When you subtract the two, you’ll get her salary; I’ll bet you it’s less than a walgreen’s pharmacist.
I’ll also bet you that if she didn’t overbook, she would be in the red.
For my first appointment with a doctor after I graduated college, I had to wait an hour and a half for a 9:30 am appointment time, and another half an hour to see him after I was brought into an exam room. He was a nice guy, but I refuse to do business with anyone who disrespects my time that much.
If I had an appointment with Jesus Christ and he kept me waiting more than 20 minutes, I would leave.
A couple of years ago I had to take my daughter to see a foot doctor. This guy would come once a week and see patients out of my regular doctors office. About 15 minutes after our scheduled time, when I was just starting to get irritated, an old woman hobbled up to the desk and asked his nurse (who comes with him) if it was going to be much longer. The nurse told her to sit down until she was called. Turned out that this woman had an appointment an hour before us. So I gathered my things to leave. I usually don’t bother telling them I am going, but I had already filled out the forms and I wanted them back..no reason to leave my personal info with a doctor I was never going to see again. I asked Nurse Ratched for my forms back and she didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. I calmly told her that I expected to be seen on time, that her boss was a foot doctor, that there was no such thing as a foot emergency, and, therefore they were overscheduling. She was literally shaking, she was so angry. She demanded that I sit down and cross out all the info on my forms because they were “proprietary”. I just laughed and folded them and stuck them in my pocket and walked out. I was almost at the door when she screamed at me that “you have to wait to see any doctor! that’s the way it is! They all make you wait!” The regular nurses behind the desk had all turned white to hear this nutbag scream in their waiting room. I told her “this doctor sees me on time” and left.
Crowning moment of awesome.
It’s insane how we accept this as normal. I learned while visiting a doctor in Argentina how things could be. They have beautiful offices with a single desk in their lobby with a person sitting there. No glass screens or windows. You walk up and tell the person you have an appointment. They then look at their hand-written list, cross you off and ask you to sit down. They get up and go to one of the many doors that have doctors behind them. They knock, open, whisper something. They come over to where you are sitting and say, “the doctor is ready to see you.” You go into a very sparse office again with a single desk, no table to lie on – rather chairs. You talk with the doctor – you have a conversation – no rush no pressure. I also like that you don’t get weighed, blood pressure temperature and all that stuff that may or may not be related to your problem. If you need those things – you do them. But first you tell the doctor why you are there. I saw this not in one unique place but while visiting five different offices. Test results were the same way – you walk in, you say your name and they hand you your results. You see your own results! Unbelievably. Poor disgraced third world countries have no idea what they are doing with all that free education and social care. I’m the last person to drop Michael Moore’s name but the part of the movie were he went to Cuba was real.
Congratulations! The home loan you applied for during your recent trip to Argentina was approved!
Because that wasn’t a doctor’s office….
I think most folks have horror stories about waiting in a doctor’s office! I worked for a doctor (psychologist) for 8 1/2 years. I can count on one hand the number of times he was late or ran over. He was always on time. But I think that was mainly because he didn’t like his job.
I have left two doctors’ offices because of lateness. One was my former OB/GYN. I showed up one day and was told he was delivering a baby, running just a bit late. Ok, should I rescheduled or….? Oh he just called. He’ll be here any minute now. Here’s a gown, blahblahblah, lay down and put your feet in the stirrups. I did. And promptly fell asleep. Woke up about 1 1/2 hours later and he still hadn’t been there and no one had even bothered to check on me or tell me anything! If I’d been awake, I would have opened a royal can of whoopass. As it was, I just dressed and left and found me another doctor.
My other doctor was my PCP. He kept me waiting in the waiting room for about 30 minutes. When I finally got in to see him, he spoke with me for about 5 minutes and then excused himself to take a “very important” cell phone call. I heard him out in the hallway asking about when his car was going to be finished being detailed!! Yeah, reallll important. I finished with that appointment and found me another PCP. That was just the last straw of many straws.
What’s the difference between God and a doctor? God doesn’t think he’s a doctor.
Doctors do exist, good or bad, on time or not.
The biggest problem I get are the tacked on complaints. They hold things back when they schedule the appointment. So something we plan 5 minutes for ends up taking 20….. then it all domino’s downhill….
What’s worse is a doctor’s office where the equipment or the walls or the location preclude you from surfing the net or playing co-op games on your smartphone. My spinal surgeon’s office is in such a place, and since there are only a couple of them in the city, it’s either him or… him. Or a 30-mile drive to the next nearest one.
Last time I went, it took me three hours. I complained to the office manager, and it turned out in the end that the fault was half an emergency (no one could’ve helped) and half one of my own colleagues, a TV meteorologist who decided “I MUST BE SEEN NOW BECAUSE I’M SO DAMN IMPORTANT SINCE I’M ON TV!!!!!!111111ONEONEone”. I was really tempted to confront him.
I don’t mind long waits if the doctor reimburses me for my time spent not at work. It actually ended up costing me over $150 for the appointment, if you work in copays, time spent not working (I get paid hourly, and have no PTO or sick time), travel time, and COBRA. I’d like that money back, please.
Well, when patient numero uno shows up fifteen minutes late, but begs to be seen, a doctor doesn’t want to look like an asshole by turning him away. So that just screws up the schedule for the whole day.
We tell our patients they can be worked back in so there will most likely be a wait. Most of them tend to reschedule at that point.
What you have to consider is WHY the doctor is running late. I’ve shadowed a few doctors in my time. If your doctor is having you wait while playing tetris, yeah, get a new doctor. But all of the ones that I’ve shadowed have been busy constantly. It’s not that they’re bad at scheduling, but emergencies come up. Is your doctor going to ignore someone’s heart attack to look at your hangnail, just because you had an appointment and he didn’t? One of the doctors I shadowed spent a good 5-10 minutes before seeing each patient carefully reviewing their medical charts and history. Patients never saw that, but they definitely benefited from it. He also made sure all his patients had all their questions answered and understood their treatment plans, which sometimes took longer than allotted for in the schedule. Don’t assume that your doctor is off playing games; chances are, they’re not. I just accept the wait as a fact of life.
1) If the doctor is spending 10 minutes in preparation with every patient, that should be built into the schedule.
2) If the doctor has an emergency or is running over significantly, the staff can notify the patient and ask if they’d like to wait or reschedule.
This isn’t rocket science.
My doctors have the sometimes-helpful-sometimes-annoying practice of calling the day before an appointment with a reminder. As part of that reminder, they usually mention the “No Show” fee of $25-50. That is, if you don’t give at least 24 hours notice of cancellation, they’ll charge you a fee.
The underlying assumption is that by not showing, you’re wasting the Doctor’s time which would otherwise be bringing in money.
My practice from this point forward: When I get that call, I will respond as follows,
“I understand your policy regarding fees for No Shows. I would like to inform you of my policy: If I appear for my appointment on time, I expect to be told a realistic time frame for when I will be seen by the doctor. If I am given a time, and made to wait more than 15 minutes beyond that time frame, I charge a fee of $___ [equal to their No Show fee]. Thank you for understanding my policy.”
It should work both ways. If I need to pay a doctor for wasting his/her time, then s/he ought to pay me for wasting mine. They have the opportunity to tell me–when I check in–”The doctor is running about 30 minutes behind. Sorry for the wait.” If they do so, they’re covered. But when they say, “Thanks, have a seat.” and I wait for an hour after my appointment, that’s my time they’re wasting. The assumption that the doctor’s time is more valuable than mine infuriates me. It’s neither more or less valuable. Please treat your customers as though they were valued.
So when I have a patient with a new cancer diagnosis, and you’re on my list to be seen, what I’ll do is spend 9 minutes giving about 1/3 of my cancer talk, and then have you come into the room to tell him that your time is more valuable, and he should go on the internet and leave now, so that you can be seen.
Back in the 70-80′s, my mother once submitted a bill for the time she lost at work because the Dr. kept her waiting multiple times and got fed up. I forget if she deducted it from his bill or sent him one, but after that, she never was kept waiting again. She didn’t do it for all the times she was kept waiting but for the most recent time(s) when it got ridiculous.
The gyno I used to see in New York… she was a great doctor but that practice had some serious scheduling issues. Eventually I realized that if I scheduled for 4:30, I could actually just leave work at 5:00 as usual and be there at 5:30, and be seen 15 – 30 minutes later.
In Florida, I had several doctors that had a lot of elderly patients. I expected to be waiting.
My last neurologist told me to call about an hour ahead of time to see what the wait would be – that way I could stay at work a little more before I left.
I never really cared about sitting in a waiting room. I just figured the doctors had some patients that had a lot of concerns and took longer than expected.
I would just read.
^This. If the doctor is running late, that’s fine. But be up front about it, and give people the opportunity to adjust their schedules. Lying about the wait only makes people angry, and is blatantly disrespectful.
These days with Yelp and angies list and citysearch getting high Google ratings, a online review will carry a lot of weight.
If you want to really make a point tell your doctor about there well earned review.
This is one of my pet peeves! I have FIRED doctors. One doctor threatened to “dismiss me from his practice.” These are my exact words I told him: “You’re going to dismiss ME? You need to understand that you are a “service provider.” You are no different then my plumber, my gardener, or the guy that collects my garbage!” If you don’t want my business I’m sure i can find a doctor who does! That was 10 years ago and I have never had to wait more then 10 minutes to get in to see him and my RX refills are called in within minutes of notifying his office.
Just because they have little letters after their name does not impress me. The medical profession thinks that they are special and rules, customer service, and being respectful of their patients is beneath then. Don’t let them get away with it!
Doctors are completely within their rights to fire patients that they feel that they cannot form a good relationship with. Notification has to be done in advance to give you adequate time to find another physician (usually a month or two). If you were acting like the ass you sound like in this post then I would fire you too.
For those of you who talk about “so if my doc doesn’t like me they’ll get rid of me,” that’s not how it works. It means people who are constantly rude or assholes who just ignore the doc’s advice. Basically, it doesn’t help your health to have an adversarial relationship, so you might as well find someone who might have a better chance of making you feel comfortable.
You’re the kind of person who thinks it’s ok to barge into my Assistant Principal’s office in the morning and demand to see me immediately because you’re “a parent.”
If you treat service professionals as if they were somehow beneath you, then you’re getting shuffled to the back of the line.
My wife’s OB makes us wait 45 minutes to an hour. I hate hate hate this, but my wife really likes the OB and refuses to even consider another one. This doctor has delivered both of our kids, and while I admit he’s really terrific, going to that office makes me stabby.
The very worst was when my wife was having contractions about 7 minutes apart for about six hours, and we called the doctor, who told us to come into the office right away. So we did…. and we sat in the waiting room for an hour. Every five minutes, I got up and asked the receptionist how long it would be, and every five minutes they told me “five minutes”.
I finally lost my temper and started yelling at the poor receptionist. The doctor rushed to the front, ushered us into an exam room, told us to go to the hospital. We were out of there in… five minutes. Had a boy later that evening.
So you had a boy…several hours later. I’m curious as to why, if she was in labor, you didn’t go to the hospital in the first place. And also, what the point of the story is. I expected it to end with “…and because he took so long, the baby was born in the waiting room.”
Because giving birth isn’t like a movie. You don’t go to the hospital right when you’re in labor, labor lasts 6-30 hours and you’re not in any need of medical assistance through most of it if it’s a normal pregnancy. They’ll send you right back home until you’re ready to give birth. Going to a doctor to get an estimate for how your labor’s progressing and when it’s time to go to the hospital is the norm. Rushing straight to the hospital is not. The doc just kept them waiting so long the answer was “go now.”
I don’t think there’s a service business around that doesn’t make people wait. You want a tech from cable to visit your home…there’s a four hour window. You want your ten minute oil change to get done in ten minutes…doubtful. So why should doctors be so different. It’s really a problem of supply and demand. If there weren’t so many sick people there wouldn’t be so many people in the doctor’s office. Stay healthy, you won’t need a doctor.
Simple solution: don’t go to the Dr. unless absolutely necessary.
Lots of people go to the doctor every time something aches or pops and it’s usually totally unnecessary.
This. Way too many people think that they or their child has to be seen by the doctor every single time they get a sniffle. (These are also usually the type of patients who demand to be given antibiotics for conditions that antibiotics won’t help.) Here’s a clue, people: your doctor is not God, Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy; he can’t wave a wand and instantly make every little boo-boo better. Here’s another clue: most of the things that are wrong with you will go away on their own. Many minor problems can be treated more easily and less expensively using home remedies. Educate yourself–learn to distinguish between minor problems that you can take care of on your own and serious problems that actually need intervention that ONLY a doctor can provide. As much as we puff doctors up, they are just that: providers of specialized services. Going to the doctor for a simple problem that he can’t really do anything about (like the common cold) is like taking your car to the mechanic because it ran out of gas.
How does your simple solution solve waiting for the doctor?
Oh I see what you did there.
You took a legitimate complaint about doctors overbooking and making patients wait, and turned it into some kind of slam against people who complain about waiting, because, some people, go to the doctor too often?
I see a lot of great doctors – and honestly, they don’t even know when they’re late – they just know who’s next, not what time your appt was… In that case, the best thing I’ve found is to nicely let them know my appt was at X, and I ask when’s the best time of day to make an appt? They’re always apologetic – they’re treating patients (not playing Tetris….)
I raise a big stink in the waiting room and then leave, especially if the time I’m waiting is many multiples of the amount of time I expect to spend with the doctor. I’m the paying customer in the relationship, and my time is just as valuable as the doctor’s. If I made my clients wait over an hour to see me, I’d quickly be out of business. I’ll reschedule once on the off chance that there was a legitimate emergency, and after that it’s off to another doctor.
I am willing to wait for 30 minutes. Then I tell the staff my time is also valuable and I don’t want to waste it sitting in a waiting room. I then request rescheduling the appointment.
However, I believe office staffs are as much at fault as doctors in that they rarely inform the patient the doctor is running late at check-in and offer to reschedule.
Ahhh, to live in a land where you can actually select from more than one doctor. Sorry, I’d rather wait 30 minutes in the doctor’s office than wait 2 years to replace them.
http://news.therecord.com/specialsections/section/doctor/274451
We went to a pediatrician once. 90 minutes (or more) after the appointment time, we finally got into an exam room. The doctor spent 1, maybe 2 minutes total seeing us. The irony here is we picked this doctor in part because of how close he is to our house, but if we had seen a doctor slightly farther away who was more timely it would have been more than worth it in time. We never saw that pediatrician again.
Um… when the next appointment at an OB/GYN is ~4 weeks, and ~6 weeks at a Dermatologist, you have no power or say in anything. Just be thankful they will still see you.
Ugh…what is it with dermatology offices? I think they are the worst at scheduling appointments, and the worst I’ve experienced for office waits.
One (of the many things) I love about seeing a nurse-midwife instead of an OB/GYN is that I’ve never had to wait more than 10 minutes. The schedulers at the office are great, too, and make sure they know exactly why you’re coming so they can schedule the right length of visit.
they’re in there checking facebook? and here I thought a patient either came in late or needed a procedure that the doc didn’t anticipate. How naive I must be.
One time i was visiting my doc for something and he had a surprise solution for me- outpatient surgery, right there in the office. I’m sure that slowed things down a tad for everyone else. Guess what? medicine is not all balck and white. jesus, get some empathy gene therapy, Phil.
My OB/GYN was sometimes the worst for wait times. I needed an end of day appointment so I would have childcare, and the wait time could be up to an hour!
But I didn’t mind. I knew to expect it, so I brought a book. And I really, really appreciated the fact that my doctor gave me as much time as I needed, not just popping me in and out in 10 minutes. I knew that if he was concerned about something, he would thoroughly evaluate it and do an ultrasound right then and there- himself- and didn’t begrudge the time he gave to other patients.
I told my Doc every time I waited more than 10 minutes beyond my scheduled time and he replaced his entire office staff. It turns out that they were the ones not telling him that he had patients ready and waiting. The final straw for him was when all of his exam rooms were filled with people (including me) and he walked out of his office after having an extended lunch with his family because his office manager had “cleared his early afternoon schedule.”
I had a doctor cancel on me with less than 24 hours notice and made them give me a $75 credit, same thing they charge if you do it to them. It covered my next 3 co-pays.