Doctor was 45 minutes late after appointment time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:and he knew that I was upset because when he came in he didn't apologize but said, "we're doing our best.".

I replied, "45 minutes past my appointment time is your 'best'? If you are running this late, then have someone advise patient because my time is also valuable."

He didn't like this and I didn't care. I am so sick of doctors running late because of their greed in overbooking.

Like most medical practices they cancel, and charge, if patient is 15 minutes late.

I have enough Grace if there’s a true emergency.

I have, however, sent an invoice to a doctor who kept me waiting longer than an hour.

And? Did they pay? Did you keep seeing them?

[Anonymous]

Expectations and judgments of doctors are crazy on this forum this week. Pair this thread with the one about doctors not being altruistic. Then throw in some comments that it's all greed and the doctors are making bank.

Pretty soon no one is going to want to be a physician.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Unless they are delayed by a true emergency, long wait times are a symptom of a poorly run office and/or not allocating enough appt time and buffer time between appts.

[Anonymous]

I made an appointment weeks in advance, arrived 1/2 hour early, the doctor was 4 hours late, never apologized, I was his last patient in the waiting room. I waited 4 hours because I was unwell and needed to see a doctor.

It was apparent that he had taken other unscheduled patients that afternoon. I don't know why, but an apology would have been the bare minimum. I quit this doctor because of the lack of concern for patients and I took that as a red flag.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

Some doctors are so arrogant that they don't care about patients, being late is a sign.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ortho patients seeing their doctor in clinic are subject to any emergencies or surgeries that happened that day or the day before. (No, you’re so far from correct about orthopedic surgeons not having emergency patients hahahahah tell that to the person whose arm got amputated or the kid whose leg got crushed into 28377 tiny bone fragments in a car accident at 4am).

Emergencies are a different story. Doesn't sound like that was the case for OP's doctor.

[Anonymous]

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.

I left our peds because they were consistently late. It was really hard when the kids were young. One time, they were 40 min late for a 7:40am appointment. How does that even happen?

Stuck in traffic.

at 7:40?

are these doctors really unable to manage their time? do they have ADHD?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I pride myself on running on time at my pediatric office. Last week I had two RSV patient emergencies that required a lot of breathing treatments and monitoring and in one case, oxygen treatment and an ambulance transfer to the hospital.

Guess who chewed me out? The patient who was waiting for their well check up after that one, that well patient who didn’t see me on the phone with the hospital, who didn’t see me giving multiple treatments, who didn’t see EMS come through and transport that really sick kid out of my office after I did everything I could to stabilize them and try to keep them out of the hospital, who didn’t see me coordinating with the father what the plan was because the mom was too upset to do so.

Of course I apologized profusely to my patients who got delayed and briefly explained why I was so late without taking anyone’s privacy away, but for some people it’s never going to be enough if they were inconvenienced. It’s a tough balancing act.

Another mom chewed me out last week because she brought in her three sick kids to a fully booked day and asked my coworker to squeeze in the fourth the previous week. My coworker explained that she was behind and that the fourth kid could schedule with a provider who had availability in 30 min, but the mom took it as a personal offense and interpreted it as the doctor was uncaring and rude and didn’t want to accommodate her, a busy mother.

It’s a tough business right now and it’s not making any of us rich.

Do you send your receptionist or nurses in and tell the patients that you were running behind because of an emergency? If not that would help a lot of people and manage their expectations. Not just the blanket, “she’ll be in in a couple of minutes”, but some thing a little bit more substantial in terms of explanation (“The doctor is dealing with a couple of emergencies that are taking longer than expected”)would go a long way. Everybody understands that emergencies come up and if your child was the one who needed the extra attention as a parent everybody would be thankful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ortho patients seeing their doctor in clinic are subject to any emergencies or surgeries that happened that day or the day before. (No, you’re so far from correct about orthopedic surgeons not having emergency patients hahahahah tell that to the person whose arm got amputated or the kid whose leg got crushed into 28377 tiny bone fragments in a car accident at 4am).

Emergencies are a different story. Doesn't sound like that was the case for OP's doctor.

What evidence do you have on that? She didn't even say what type of doctor. You know drs can't disclose other patient's health problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ortho patients seeing their doctor in clinic are subject to any emergencies or surgeries that happened that day or the day before. (No, you’re so far from correct about orthopedic surgeons not having emergency patients hahahahah tell that to the person whose arm got amputated or the kid whose leg got crushed into 28377 tiny bone fragments in a car accident at 4am).

Emergencies are a different story. Doesn't sound like that was the case for OP's doctor.

What evidence do you have on that? She didn't even say what type of doctor. You know drs can't disclose other patient's health problems.

OP. I said it was an orthopedic office. My appt. Was 2nd of day. There was no emergency. If there had been, I am sure do. Or nurse would have said so. Once again, just advise patient when doctor, NO, or PA over 15 minutes late and not with "he'll be with you in a minute"!

[Anonymous]

NP not NO

[Anonymous]

In the last 5 years, my GP is periodically 1+ hours late and one time the pediatrician was as well. We're in florida, so the Gp's practice is made up of like 50% elderly. He was telling me how that one morning they'd already had to have the ambulance come to the office 4 times by 11am. Lots of people coming in with confusion or heart attack symptoms. He said that was an unusual morning, but things happen. I can forgive that.

And the pediatrician was an hour late once because she was the doctor on record for a newborn at the hospital who on day 2, had a crisis and the doctor spent all night at the hospital - baby unlikely to make it. I don't think she typically is on call at the hospital so i didn't understand the arrangement - but point was, another good excuse.

So i guess i am pretty sympathetic to their delays so long as it's not a matter of course. That said, i do always appreciate it that a nurse at least pops in and says 'doctor coming soon, you're up next' or whatever. I know those answers are typically BS, but it at least reminds me that they know i'm still there. i've had some appts over the years where i literally had to open the door to the hall way and ask a nurse if they'd forgotten about my appt. You just never know.

[Anonymous]

lol.

I am so accustomed to doctors being late that I just assume that my appointments will be 2 hours long because half of it is waiting. This was true when I was with the midwives at WHC in 2015, and with the doctors I had at an urban hospital in a different city.

For those who think that there are no emergencies with basic doctor/midwife/ped appointments, that's just straight up not true. I've had a doctor come into a pediatrician appointment an hour late because of an emergency that came up in an appointment right before ours -- those delays stack and it's really hard to make up time. I also had an OB late once and heard screaming and a lot of activity from the room right over, so... who knows what was going on.

I switched my own doctor to a concierge-style service (unrelated to wait times) and now she's never late. But that makes me feel icky, like if you pay more you get better service, but at my more "urban" hospitals, where they take all comers, you just have to wait. It sucks but it's medicine in America.

If you can't wait, schedule your appointment for the early morning.