Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are so many reasons doc run late that have nothing to do with actual appointment times. They really are often doing their very best and skipping lunch to catch up. I’m sorry you had to wait. Someone should have let you know they were behind too. Extend compassion as we often receive the same in kind when having very human moments.

If appointment time means nothing then why not just have open House and walk in patients.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

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 wrote:

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 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.

But when there is a shortage of pediatric specialists in almost every discipline, and people are waiting a long time for appointments as is, changing their schedules so that they see fewer patients and people have even longer wait times, isn't the answer.

I would rather wait an hour in an exam room, which I've done, than wait 3 or 4 months for an appointment when my kid is in pain.

Anonymous wrote:

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 wrote:

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.