Doctor was 45 minutes late after appointment time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 100% with you, OP. I am so tired of the social acceptance that doctors can keep you waiting an hour plus - all because they over schedule the same time slots. It is the sh$ttiest practice model and we all seem to take it over and over again. I have zero sympathy for most practices, as I've yet to have a doctor who was genuinely remorseful or sympathetic that a patient had been left in a waiting room to waste their valuable time.

I'm an attorney. I can promise you that if I left a client waiting for 45 minutes, they'd find another atty - and with good reason. We should not be shelling out money to professionals who disrespects their entire client base day in and day out.

And all of this "but it was an emergency!" BS. No, it is not an emergency every day. It is a culture of overbooking. Period.

I'm sure you are a good attorney. But you clearly don't understand what medical providers' work lives are like. DOCTORS don't "keep you waiting over an hour." They practices they work for create scheduling templates that are simply impossible to keep running on time. And practice managers/administration know this. So you might say - well go work someplace that doesn't overschedule. But outside of concierge practices those systems don't exist. Unless they are solo practitioners the people your beef is with is the administration and practice managers for pretty much every practice out there. I don't know any medical providers who feel their schedule is reasonable, and I know a lot of people in healthcare.

All my siblings are doctors. My parent is a doctor. My siblings' spouses are doctors, and my in-laws are doctors. But sure, I don't know doctors.
I can tell you that doctors - by and large - do not give a #$% about their patients' time. There is an unreasonably acceptable level of arrogance among physicians in our society. They treat us like crap, think we are making everything up and have no respect for their patients time and money. It is a systemic issue. I see it ALL the time. And yes, the managing physicians absolutely can instruct their admin to schedule less patients per block. All they have to do is say the word but they don't. Because gross revenue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 100% with you, OP. I am so tired of the social acceptance that doctors can keep you waiting an hour plus - all because they over schedule the same time slots. It is the sh$ttiest practice model and we all seem to take it over and over again. I have zero sympathy for most practices, as I've yet to have a doctor who was genuinely remorseful or sympathetic that a patient had been left in a waiting room to waste their valuable time.

I'm an attorney. I can promise you that if I left a client waiting for 45 minutes, they'd find another atty - and with good reason. We should not be shelling out money to professionals who disrespects their entire client base day in and day out.

And all of this "but it was an emergency!" BS. No, it is not an emergency every day. It is a culture of overbooking. Period.

and why do they overbook? Because people expect- no, demand!- to see a doctor for every little thing, and a specialist half the time at that. If you want them to see fewer patients, expect that you won’t ever get an appointment unless you’re aboht to die, and even then it will be for 2 weeks from now.

Then vet the patients. It is really not that difficult. I'm tired of all the excuses for why doctors are incompetent at running a business.
I vet my clients before a consult. Why can't they? Private practice can absolutely refuse service. They can also charge fees for services. If I have a PITA client, I charge for all the services.

I pay out of pocket for a concierge GP service and LOVE it. It absolutely can be done. Doctors are just greedy.

Wait but they DO vet them! That’s why it takes you 5 months to get an appointment because you got vetted and you’re down low on the list and that’s why you waited for 2 hours because a patient who got triaged as more needing of services than you got double booked on your time slot

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had an Ortho show up 40 minutes late once. I was his first appointment of the day. I saw him arrive while sitting in the waiting room. I asked him why I was kept waiting so long and he lied and said he’d been stuck with another patient. I told him that I saw him walk past me with his coat on his arm and a cup of coffee.. Never went back to him again. This was at CAO Ortho in foxhall.

If he is an ortho surgeon he might have been held up doing rounds prior to going to his practice. Some of you don't seem to understand what doctors do.

So...poor scheduling. Allocate more time for rounds.

Allocate more time from where? They can’t control if 7 new ortho patients got admitted overnight and suddenly they are rounding on 12 patients instead of 5. Or 20 instead of 5.

Start office hours later on hospital days.

It's not that hard to figure out.

Got it. So, see fewer patients overall. Sounds ideal. Hope you don’t need to see a specialist anytime soon because they’ve taken your advice and your appointment date for your brain tumor is in March 2024.

Yes, see fewer patients if you can't figure out how to manage your time and schedule better.

Uh, maybe manage your health better and then you won't need to see your doctor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 100% with you, OP. I am so tired of the social acceptance that doctors can keep you waiting an hour plus - all because they over schedule the same time slots. It is the sh$ttiest practice model and we all seem to take it over and over again. I have zero sympathy for most practices, as I've yet to have a doctor who was genuinely remorseful or sympathetic that a patient had been left in a waiting room to waste their valuable time.

I'm an attorney. I can promise you that if I left a client waiting for 45 minutes, they'd find another atty - and with good reason. We should not be shelling out money to professionals who disrespects their entire client base day in and day out.

And all of this "but it was an emergency!" BS. No, it is not an emergency every day. It is a culture of overbooking. Period.

I'm sure you are a good attorney. But you clearly don't understand what medical providers' work lives are like. DOCTORS don't "keep you waiting over an hour." They practices they work for create scheduling templates that are simply impossible to keep running on time. And practice managers/administration know this. So you might say - well go work someplace that doesn't overschedule. But outside of concierge practices those systems don't exist. Unless they are solo practitioners the people your beef is with is the administration and practice managers for pretty much every practice out there. I don't know any medical providers who feel their schedule is reasonable, and I know a lot of people in healthcare.

The best scheduling (and, not coincidentally, medical care) that I've ever had was a small practice where the 4 MDs owned the business. They hired the office staff and defined the rules. Everything was well thought out and incredibly efficient. They took ownership instead of complaining about others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had an Ortho show up 40 minutes late once. I was his first appointment of the day. I saw him arrive while sitting in the waiting room. I asked him why I was kept waiting so long and he lied and said he’d been stuck with another patient. I told him that I saw him walk past me with his coat on his arm and a cup of coffee.. Never went back to him again. This was at CAO Ortho in foxhall.

If he is an ortho surgeon he might have been held up doing rounds prior to going to his practice. Some of you don't seem to understand what doctors do.

So...poor scheduling. Allocate more time for rounds.

Allocate more time from where? They can’t control if 7 new ortho patients got admitted overnight and suddenly they are rounding on 12 patients instead of 5. Or 20 instead of 5.

Start office hours later on hospital days.

It's not that hard to figure out.

Got it. So, see fewer patients overall. Sounds ideal. Hope you don’t need to see a specialist anytime soon because they’ve taken your advice and your appointment date for your brain tumor is in March 2024.

Yes, see fewer patients if you can't figure out how to manage your time and schedule better.

Uh, maybe manage your health better and then you won't need to see your doctor.

I'm good with my doctors, thanks. I dropped the ones who can't handle the basics.

[Anonymous]

I see both sides of this. I try my best to be polite and recognize that doctors are often behind because patients before me need more help and their appointments take longer. I plan ahead to be patient. The one thing that sends me over the edge is when they leave me sitting there undressed in the paper gown for 30-60 minutes. It's cold and uncomfortable and then I'm faced with the choice of having to walk out into the hallway half naked to ask if anyone knows how much longer the wait will be (which I've only ever done once because....paper gown). Ugh. The system is broken.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 8 week old had a well check and the ped was running 90 minutes behind for a 10:30am appointment. How does that happen? When we finally saw her she spent 6 minutes with us and we were on our way. She was even charting during our appointment. I asked several times how much longer but it was always 10 more minutes. I hate having such a tiny baby there for so long with the number of sick kids.

It happens when one of their patients winds up getting admitted to the hospital that morning and they have to go check on them, when they get stuck on the phone with an insurance company that's trying to deny coverage for a procedure the dr is sure the patient needs, when the parent of a patient waits until the dr is walking out to say "Hey is this huge lump a problem? Oh and I know you're not seeing my other kid right now but he has a rash that's been spreading steadily since last night and now is saying he can't breathe - is that a problem?" And then he has a patient puke on him and he has to change all his clothes. And then he's human and needs to take five minutes to eat breakfast because he hasn't eaten yet that morning and is starting to feel lightheaded. That's how that happens.

The thing is... you KNOW all of that will happen. Probably multiple times per week. It should be accounted for in the schedule - yes even if it means on the rare unicorn of a day when none of that happens, you may have been able to see an extra patient or two. You can't plan for a perfect day, and then be shocked when the schedule goes to hell because of things that will almost certainly go wrong.
And yes, I know it's not the doctors who make the schedules in most practices - my ire is at the health care system overall.

+1

It's a business decision to prioritize profit over patients.

If patients were the priority, MANY things would change, including the scheduling.

How do you propose to solve the problem of 100 people wanting to see an orthopedic specialist this week and the doctor having only 80 appointment slots (and that includes long wait times)? You propose he or she cut down to 50 so the patients seen are happier to not wait- fine- what about the other 50? Honest question because THIS is the issue with health care in our country. People expecting to see a doctor for quite literally everything wrong with their body, in a timely fashion, and not enough doctors to provide this service.

I'd be happy to help make scheduling more efficient. Need more details though.

And I call BS on "people expecting to see a doctor for quite liberally everything wrong with their body". I know one family who goes to the doctor fairly often but the vast majority very rarely see doctors for minor things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had an Ortho show up 40 minutes late once. I was his first appointment of the day. I saw him arrive while sitting in the waiting room. I asked him why I was kept waiting so long and he lied and said he’d been stuck with another patient. I told him that I saw him walk past me with his coat on his arm and a cup of coffee.. Never went back to him again. This was at CAO Ortho in foxhall.

If he is an ortho surgeon he might have been held up doing rounds prior to going to his practice. Some of you don't seem to understand what doctors do.

So...poor scheduling. Allocate more time for rounds.

Allocate more time from where? They can’t control if 7 new ortho patients got admitted overnight and suddenly they are rounding on 12 patients instead of 5. Or 20 instead of 5.

Start office hours later on hospital days.

It's not that hard to figure out.

Got it. So, see fewer patients overall. Sounds ideal. Hope you don’t need to see a specialist anytime soon because they’ve taken your advice and your appointment date for your brain tumor is in March 2024.

Yes, see fewer patients if you can't figure out how to manage your time and schedule better.

Uh, maybe manage your health better and then you won't need to see your doctor.

I'm good with my doctors, thanks. I dropped the ones who can't handle the basics.

So what are you moaning about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just want to say that this hasn't happened to me. I'm with Kaiser and have 3 kids (so tons of appts). I've never waited more than 15 min. Usually they're right on time. Kaiser isn't the best with everything but I definitely don't have the problems you all are having. I don't even wait at urgent care because you can schedule appts.

Isn't that an HMO though?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had an Ortho show up 40 minutes late once. I was his first appointment of the day. I saw him arrive while sitting in the waiting room. I asked him why I was kept waiting so long and he lied and said he’d been stuck with another patient. I told him that I saw him walk past me with his coat on his arm and a cup of coffee.. Never went back to him again. This was at CAO Ortho in foxhall.

If he is an ortho surgeon he might have been held up doing rounds prior to going to his practice. Some of you don't seem to understand what doctors do.

So...poor scheduling. Allocate more time for rounds.

Allocate more time from where? They can’t control if 7 new ortho patients got admitted overnight and suddenly they are rounding on 12 patients instead of 5. Or 20 instead of 5.

Start office hours later on hospital days.

It's not that hard to figure out.

Got it. So, see fewer patients overall. Sounds ideal. Hope you don’t need to see a specialist anytime soon because they’ve taken your advice and your appointment date for your brain tumor is in March 2024.

Yes, see fewer patients if you can't figure out how to manage your time and schedule better.

Uh, maybe manage your health better and then you won't need to see your doctor.

I'm good with my doctors, thanks. I dropped the ones who can't handle the basics.

So what are you moaning about?

Doctors with poor scheduling. Try to keep up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Part of the issue is that practices have trouble making money because insurances don’t reimburse for so many things patients demand. See the thread about people recommending flu/ strep/ covid/ RSV swabs for a healthy 10 year old with a week of a cough. Do you think insurance reimburses for those tests, which are actually incredibly expensive for the office to run? They don’t! They say there is no medical necessity for a 10 year old to get an RSV test and they do not pay for it.

Huh? If insurance didn't cover these tests the practice would pass the cost onto the patient. They wouldn't absorb it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 100% with you, OP. I am so tired of the social acceptance that doctors can keep you waiting an hour plus - all because they over schedule the same time slots. It is the sh$ttiest practice model and we all seem to take it over and over again. I have zero sympathy for most practices, as I've yet to have a doctor who was genuinely remorseful or sympathetic that a patient had been left in a waiting room to waste their valuable time.

I'm an attorney. I can promise you that if I left a client waiting for 45 minutes, they'd find another atty - and with good reason. We should not be shelling out money to professionals who disrespects their entire client base day in and day out.

And all of this "but it was an emergency!" BS. No, it is not an emergency every day. It is a culture of overbooking. Period.

and why do they overbook? Because people expect- no, demand!- to see a doctor for every little thing, and a specialist half the time at that. If you want them to see fewer patients, expect that you won’t ever get an appointment unless you’re aboht to die, and even then it will be for 2 weeks from now.

Then vet the patients. It is really not that difficult. I'm tired of all the excuses for why doctors are incompetent at running a business.
I vet my clients before a consult. Why can't they? Private practice can absolutely refuse service. They can also charge fees for services. If I have a PITA client, I charge for all the services.

I pay out of pocket for a concierge GP service and LOVE it. It absolutely can be done. Doctors are just greedy.

Does your business take insurance?
You are so clueless. An attorney who is paying out of pocket for concierge thinks he/she has all the answers. Haha

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had an Ortho show up 40 minutes late once. I was his first appointment of the day. I saw him arrive while sitting in the waiting room. I asked him why I was kept waiting so long and he lied and said he’d been stuck with another patient. I told him that I saw him walk past me with his coat on his arm and a cup of coffee.. Never went back to him again. This was at CAO Ortho in foxhall.

If he is an ortho surgeon he might have been held up doing rounds prior to going to his practice. Some of you don't seem to understand what doctors do.

So...poor scheduling. Allocate more time for rounds.

Allocate more time from where? They can’t control if 7 new ortho patients got admitted overnight and suddenly they are rounding on 12 patients instead of 5. Or 20 instead of 5.

Start office hours later on hospital days.

It's not that hard to figure out.

Got it. So, see fewer patients overall. Sounds ideal. Hope you don’t need to see a specialist anytime soon because they’ve taken your advice and your appointment date for your brain tumor is in March 2024.

Yes, see fewer patients if you can't figure out how to manage your time and schedule better.

Uh, maybe manage your health better and then you won't need to see your doctor.

I'm good with my doctors, thanks. I dropped the ones who can't handle the basics.

So what are you moaning about?

Doctors with poor scheduling. Try to keep up.

Why, though? Apparently it doesn't affect you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 100% with you, OP. I am so tired of the social acceptance that doctors can keep you waiting an hour plus - all because they over schedule the same time slots. It is the sh$ttiest practice model and we all seem to take it over and over again. I have zero sympathy for most practices, as I've yet to have a doctor who was genuinely remorseful or sympathetic that a patient had been left in a waiting room to waste their valuable time.

I'm an attorney. I can promise you that if I left a client waiting for 45 minutes, they'd find another atty - and with good reason. We should not be shelling out money to professionals who disrespects their entire client base day in and day out.

And all of this "but it was an emergency!" BS. No, it is not an emergency every day. It is a culture of overbooking. Period.

and why do they overbook? Because people expect- no, demand!- to see a doctor for every little thing, and a specialist half the time at that. If you want them to see fewer patients, expect that you won’t ever get an appointment unless you’re aboht to die, and even then it will be for 2 weeks from now.

Then vet the patients. It is really not that difficult. I'm tired of all the excuses for why doctors are incompetent at running a business.
I vet my clients before a consult. Why can't they? Private practice can absolutely refuse service. They can also charge fees for services. If I have a PITA client, I charge for all the services.

I pay out of pocket for a concierge GP service and LOVE it. It absolutely can be done. Doctors are just greedy.

Please explain “vet them”. Like turn them away if they don’t pay what the doctor wants? You may get away with that in your law practice, but a doctor can’t. It’s not ethical. That’s probably really hard for you to understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 8 week old had a well check and the ped was running 90 minutes behind for a 10:30am appointment. How does that happen? When we finally saw her she spent 6 minutes with us and we were on our way. She was even charting during our appointment. I asked several times how much longer but it was always 10 more minutes. I hate having such a tiny baby there for so long with the number of sick kids.

It happens when one of their patients winds up getting admitted to the hospital that morning and they have to go check on them, when they get stuck on the phone with an insurance company that's trying to deny coverage for a procedure the dr is sure the patient needs, when the parent of a patient waits until the dr is walking out to say "Hey is this huge lump a problem? Oh and I know you're not seeing my other kid right now but he has a rash that's been spreading steadily since last night and now is saying he can't breathe - is that a problem?" And then he has a patient puke on him and he has to change all his clothes. And then he's human and needs to take five minutes to eat breakfast because he hasn't eaten yet that morning and is starting to feel lightheaded. That's how that happens.

The thing is... you KNOW all of that will happen. Probably multiple times per week. It should be accounted for in the schedule - yes even if it means on the rare unicorn of a day when none of that happens, you may have been able to see an extra patient or two. You can't plan for a perfect day, and then be shocked when the schedule goes to hell because of things that will almost certainly go wrong.
And yes, I know it's not the doctors who make the schedules in most practices - my ire is at the health care system overall.

+1

It's a business decision to prioritize profit over patients.

If patients were the priority, MANY things would change, including the scheduling.

How do you propose to solve the problem of 100 people wanting to see an orthopedic specialist this week and the doctor having only 80 appointment slots (and that includes long wait times)? You propose he or she cut down to 50 so the patients seen are happier to not wait- fine- what about the other 50? Honest question because THIS is the issue with health care in our country. People expecting to see a doctor for quite literally everything wrong with their body, in a timely fashion, and not enough doctors to provide this service.

Isn't that why doctors are going concierge? There is no need to see 100 if you cap the number of patients