Speaking from experience, we’re an hour behind because 20 people were 5 minutes late
Or dealing with someone’s life threatening emergency and pretending it’s people being late.
How does that make sense lol. If everyone is 5 minutes late, then the whole schedule shifts back 5 minutes. The only way it builds into an hour long wait is if they’re being overbooked on an over optimistic schedule. Hoping they’ll only take X minutes but they actually take X+5, for example.
Hey look, you figured out where the scam is, congratulations.
TIL Doctors cannot write legibly nor manage a basic queueing process.
And definitely not from the over scheduling. Yep definitely not that.
I mean - it already takes months to get an appointment. If they schedule even fewer patients I don’t see that improving either.
You don’t overschedule, people start complaining that too many doctors aren’t taking new patients. You try to increase the amount of doctors and people complain about immigration. Can’t win
Powerful lobbies are surpressing the number of doctors practicing in the US. If a foreign doctor wants to emigrate and practice here they cannot until they pass TOEFL (reasonable) AND finish US-based residencies, of which there are few. I know a Russian dermatologist who has been a receptionist for years because she cannot get ECFMG certification. Some states are wising up and waiving the residencies, but way more need to do it.
I’ve had them be running late when i’m the first friggin’ appointment
Thats just the doctor getting stuck at starbucks on their way in.
Mine has a smile on their face as long as they can overcharge me for not helping me.
Which is every single time.
At least it is free to go to the doctor
Civilized country defaultism strikes again
cries in American
Wait, you know what else we’ve got that they ain’t? Student debt! Let’s depress ourselves at them some more!
Parking can be expensive sometimes depending on where the clinic is.
Public transport makes parking unnecessary
The doctor’s office when they’re an hour behind because people keep coming in late.
I love how multiple people itt are defending doctors making us wait up to an hour after our appointment time as if it’s not 90% their fault
TBF it’s usually not the doctor’s fault, it’s systemic.
Systemic as in “everyone else does this so we have to in order to compete”?
It’s always seemed to me the issue is over scheduling
So, doctors should see fewer patients? Meaning it would take longer to get the appointment in the first place, but at least you wouldn’t have to sit in the waiting room for a bit?
They should schedule realistically and not make people wait over an hour as has happened to me several times. Are you really suggesting that doctors offices don’t fuck this up royally? It’s not on me to tell them how to fix their business but it’s abundantly obvious in America that doctors can do whatever they want to you and they don’t care if they waste (a lot of) your time. Nothing about that is inevitable, at least not nearly to the degree that it happens
Exactly. If it’s at a hospital, then the doctor has little to no say in the matter. I will always blame the bosses before the workers.
In America I have rarely gone to a hospital to see a doctor. Most of my doctor visits have been to practices with 3-5 doctors. They could choose differently. what I notice is that doctors are rich and all seem to live in very nice homes and drive fancy cars. They over schedule and waste our time because they want to maximize their profits. Not because they have to. Healthcare in America is about making money and it sucks.
I hear what you’re saying. But these are hard working people who suffered through a residency and have no personal lives. It feels like we’re being crabs in a bucket.
Three overwhelming majority of that profit is going to insurance and pharma shareholders, not to the doctors themselves. The difference between a doctor and a billionaire is about a billion dollars. Everybody ought to be living like doctors and it’s the shareholder’s fault that we aren’t.
I’ve had appointments at opening time and they’re still half an hour late. Doctor strolling in 15 minutes after the appointment time.
That’ll be $47,000
As a Canadian I genuinely can’t tell if this is an exaggeration or not.
Depends on about a billion of different factors, but the answer could range from “yeah it’s an exaggeration” to “its actually a pretty generous estimate”
At least I don’t have to put up with that part with the NHS
Oh, you see an actual doctor? I haven’t seen an actual doctor in the last like 3 years, always just a physicians assistant or other nurse.
Still get charged the dr copay though, funny how that works.
I wouldnt be surprised if the doctor is an AI construct and theyre just running my symptoms through whatever insurance company provided AI bullshit at this point.
Tbf, there is no “doctor copay.” The copay is a visit fee imposed by your insurance company that disincentivizes people from visiting the doctor. It’s also usually a paltry amount compared to the actual amount your insurance will pay the practice, and reimbursement fees for NPs and PAs are absolutely lower than for MDs
My bills literally list them as separate line items, theres the clinic copay, then the doctor copay.
Occasionally I even get two separate bills, one from the hospital, one from the Dr. Guessing their practice is the source of the one and the hospital system is the other?
Either way its fuckin annoying to be paying out of pocket 30+ bucks only to be told the equivalent of “gee i dunno take Tylenol I guess”.
If you’re 5 minutes late, you get seen 40 minutes after your appointment time. If you’re five minutes early, you are seen 10 minutes or more past your appointment time. Yep totally makes sense. And totally makes sense that people itt are making this fact the patients’ faults.
A few years ago I was heading to the major city children hospital near us for a post op follow up for my kid. GPS said it would take 1.5hrs to get there so I left 2hrs early to make sure we get parking and we’re able to get to the appointment early. Well traffic ended up being so bad it took 4hrs to get to the hospital. I called ahead of time and asked if it was ok that we still go to the appointment because we were running way later than expected. The doc office said it was fine and to just get there as soon as we could. So we got to to hospital and up to the office and they saw us right away. Well the doc gets in the room and she starts yelling at me about being late and how disrespectful it is and how us being late impacts everyone’s day. I apologized a few times as she continued to yell. Finally I said calmly “ok lady we get it. I apologized and I called ahead and your office folks said it was fine.”. Well she lost it on me after that. She said “DO NOT SCREAM AT ME OR THREATEN ME!”, then she told the nurse to call security to escort me out. I very calmly said “I did not yell. I did not threaten anyone. I simply said we understood and I don’t need to be lectured on it. It’s sounds like we all have had a stressful morning so let’s just continue with the appointment and call it a day.” And that is exactly what we did. Any followup we have had since then has been very pleasant. Just caught her on a bad day I guess.
Having a bad day is one thing. Taking it out on your patient by lying, yelling, threatening, and trying to delay their care is quite different. You must be a very forgiving person because I would have plastered details of that interaction on Google, social media, local news, their boss (if they have one), etc. Unless they’re literally the only person with that expertise in the world, no one should have to be treated like that…
That did cross my mind. However she’s a phenomenal surgeon and that is all I needed her to be. Her skills dramatically changed the quality of my kid’s life for the better so it was well worth it. Also every interaction with her since then over the years has been perfect. Maybe she found out her husband was cheating on her that morning? Maybe her grandmother passed away and she just got the news before the appointment? Whatever it was, what I said to her was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Yeah the industry has just kinda accepted that surgeons are just like that lol. A lot of hospitals are settling for just getting them to stop shanking the circulating nurses with spare scalpels. Honestly I used to work with criminally insane men so I could probably grapple a surgeon. My issue with OR was that it’s too cold and I couldn’t scratch my nose when it itches. Also ortho surgeries in particular are a sensory nightmare it was like a soundbyte of a dwarven mine from a fantasy movie on loop for eight hours just –ding ding ding CLANG ding ding ding CLANG ding ding– I could not.
I take back what I said: you’re also an amazing parent. All fair points, but I hope she at least apologized…
Better than me. I would’ve had an attitude every time I had to go back.
Thankfully we only have to see her once every 6 months or so. Plus she’s been absolutely great since the incident. I think she was probably a little embarrassed afterwards.
I had a scheduler get mad at me for being 5 mins early instead of 15. I still waited another 10 in the lobby
Oh, your bureacracy is complicated?
Cool, I don’t care.
Tell how much this is gonna cost before I obtain the service.
Can’t even come close to doing that?
Fraud, as far as I’m concerned.
When they are late, I tell the front desk to re-schedule and leave. I’ve had the dentist complain once or twice over the years but when two entities decide on a time for a meeting, that’s the time it needs to happen. Unlike the office, I’m having to cancel stuff I would normally be doing to be there, they are not.
Eventually I’ll be old and grumpy enough to start sending them bills for late cancellation (probably joking).
Exactly.
The… the norms here are bullshit, both from the PoV of ‘I am a consumer’, and also from the basic professional etiquette of ‘this is a business meeting/exchange’.
Fuck, like… I got a statement from my insurance the other day, saying they didn’t cover 1 of the two sets of glasses I got.
Called em.
Do I owe you money?
No, your optometry provider might bill you later though.
Ah ok, cool, thanks!
… and its been 6 months and the optometrists have yet to send me a bill.
Not my problem!
BankHealth Cabal Error In Your Favor!
They’re an hour behind schedule because everyone ahead of you was 5 minutes late.
Once, I was literally 2 minutes late. The doctor was busy talking to a nurse and only asked for me in 5 minutes, at which point he asked me why I’m almost 10 minutes late.
Cause and effect. Don’t be late
I would understand this anywhere but here in America. Here, I’m paying you, motherfucker.
