Please arrive 2 hours early for your flight which will be delayed 10 hours
My husband has been with a singular doctor for like almost 40 years now. Wait times have swing wildly over the years, all depending on who is actually running the business.
When he started, doctor self owned and wait times were low. The various corps that run it now have changed…a lot…and have swung from reasonable to two hours. It’s terrible.
This has been a trope forever, but is it really still common? I usually get into a room within a few minutes of my appointment time. Then a tech takes my vitals and collects other info - which is part of the appointment and the doctor doesn’t need to be there for it. Then a few minutes later the actual doctor shows up. I haven’t timed it but it’s not annoyingly long.
edit: American here
Primary care? No. I generally get in on time.
Specialists? JFC I waited an hour and a half one time for a literal BY LITERAL I MEAN LITERAL 2 minute appointment. I almost fucking left at the 1 hour mark but that’s when they started telling me I was next. This place charges $50 for missed appointments without 48 hour notice too. And 10 minutes after your appointment time is considered missed if YOU’RE the one who is late.
Which all makes sense until they leave you in the waiting room for an hour and a half and you’re left wondering if you can charge THEM for your damn time.
Specialists are a whole different ballgame. When my daughter got treated for a tumor (she got cured) we learned that “waiting” is cancer’s middle name.
Really happy to hear of your daughters success in beating it.
Another American here.
My old doctor office had me waiting for over an hour in their dingy musty crowded waiting room, before I found out that they had somehow lost my checkin and had completely forgotten me. TWICE this happened.
Then I switched to a new practice that has brand new immaculate white brightly lit waiting rooms with free keurig coffee and juice and water bottles, and a big farmhouse door aesthetic. This place has NEVER had me waiting more than 20 minutes. I can’t fathom how the old place is still in business.
Edit: the new place has an official written policy that if you no-show to two or three appointments they will fire you as a patient. I respect that.
Second edit: The new place makes a big deal about how they are an “independent medical practice” meaning they are not owned by the mega corporate hospital system that my former practice was owned by. Maybe that’s the difference.
It depends on the doctor today. I have a few that make you wait forever and then are in and out in 30 seconds when they see me.
Well yeah in civilized countries it is the norm. You know, countries where you don’t have to go into debt for multiple generations just cos u visisted the doctor once. That explains why in the US you don’t have to wait - there simply aren’t a lot of people who can afford to see a doctor.
The most i’ve ever had to wait is 15 minutes, and i live in communist new Zealand
This feels like mostly an american thing, is pretty true here. They’ve fixed it in Canada and my time there was pretty limited, but in my experience fixed in Mexico too.
My psychiatrist only sees me for fifteen minutes a month in America. I have a friend in Germany that gets an hour a week.
American also. When I had years of therapy it was always an hour a week. Maybe you’re on the “just slightly mental” plan.
No, bro, check my long history which continues onto Reddit for twelve years I’ve done my educational art project. I had a breakdown in college and told my ROTC cadre that my nonexistent sister got me pregnant because I judged my father’s wrath more of a threat than the US military, and what happened is that I got MKULTRA’d and I write propaganda as a skilled righter, but it’s for the crazies of the world as that’s what I am and I was trained to be authentic and crazy is what I be. I think I’m getting famous 6/12. That’s my court date. It’s…difficult to explain what has happened. My CIA life partner has intentionally set me up. Johnny Tremain; I’ve been intentionally set up to teach me trust in the American justice system.
Well alrighty then.
I am a messiah candidate, obviously.
My dentist has had the nerve to add a “lateness will be charged at £1 per minute late” to the end of the reminder SMS messages… which I can understand to a certain degree, but the dentist didn’t really like it when I suggested I get a discount of £1 per minute after the appointment time that the dentist called me through.
I know it’s all bullshit but the double standard baffles me.
How is that even legal?
Did they make you sign any TOS or something?Nah.
It was probably unenforceable, and just a scare tactic.
Still absolute mince though.
My assumption is that it depends on whether you wish to return as a client. If you do, then hold your nose and pay, if you don’t then ignore or dispute it.
Some doctors (mine also) started charging 10 euro extra if you don’t show up.
I think that’s fair since there is a shortage of doctors and it happens a lot causing long waiting times for others to get an appointment.
Had it recently when I got confused on the date.
Offered to pay the next time but he said I normally always show up so he let it be and asked the normal ridiculous 1 euro charge.
I like my doctor.
The dentists answer: “This might hurt a little. BZzzzZZZ!”
I suppose we can’t bring a stun gun and give a good buzz right back to him.
And if I show up an hour and a half late, the doctor still won’t be ready for me, but receptionist will tell me I missed my appointment time anyway, and will cancel my slot.
In the US, don’t forget the fee you get charged for missing your appointment time despite the fact it doesn’t work the other way around.
Basically, they just want you to check in and then they scan your health insurance card or receive whatever reports or body fluid samples you were supposed to bring. Maybe draw some blood, too. After that, there’s no need to warm a seat amidst a bunch of coughing people.
When I was a child and we entered a completely stuffed waiting room, my mother would turn around and ask the receptionist how long the waiting time was and if we could run some errands, and it’s never been an issue.
As an adult, I’m doing the same. I might buy and eat breakfast, or just walk around outside if the weather is nice.
I had a specialist that would bill for a full hour to my insurance but I only saw them for maybe 10 minutes. They got annoyed if I tried to ask any questions.
But they were sure to keep me in that room for a full hour. Always a nurse taking a full patient history, no matter how many times I went just to stretch out time and billing
Start a timer on your phone when they walk in and show them. “Have a seat, doctor”
My psychiatrist sees me for fifteen minutes a month in order to fit in two hundred patients a month. This is the way the machine works, to justify all the expenditures on new facilities to tear down perfectly good old ones, because the people with the money here know what is best for the patients.
I bring this up every time (and I recognize it’s a joke in this context) but I need to emphasize it’s administrations fault, not the doctor, usually. They force 15 minute appointments and a full schedule, which is simply not enough if anything complex takes more time. And that delay grows and grows throughout the day. You will get the worst delay right before lunch or right before the office closes, because you get to feel the extent of every delay combined
Note that the reduced delay after lunch happens if (as is usual) the doctor skips lunch. Medicine seems like a miserable profession for most specialties. Maybe my career is going to end soon because of AI, but I’m still so glad that I’m a software developer. I get paid a good fraction of what doctors get, but I’m treated so much better.
So… Take the appointment right after lunch, and cancel 30 mins before so our homie family doc can eat in peace? Got it.
Loveeee when that would happen (but they definitely will bill you for a last minute cancellation)
Yes :)
Yes very true. But at the same time you have two scenarios. 1, the doctors hired the administrators. 2, the doctors sold their clinic to a company that buys up clinics and sets up administrators that do this. Now becuase many doctor owned clinics have sold out for a big payday, new doctors have much less choice in where they work. They usually can’t afford to open a private practice, so they have to start out working at clinics owned by corporations. The lesson? Look for a private practice doctor any time you can. (In the US at least)
Okay so let’s drag these administrators into the street and give em a piece of our minds. Just another capitalist pig
My favorite is hearing this from pro-usa healthcare ppl saying how communism be will be.
My fav was a doc office that gave arrival times, not appointment times. When pressed, the appointment time was 30 minutes after the arrival time.
Im lucky. Ive been seeing the same doctor my whole life.
They know I live less than 5 mins from the office. At 30 before, they text me to check in over the phone. They then give me a time they actually want to see me. The office is usually running ahead of schedule, so its often a text just saying, ‘head on over’ and I just walk in and get escorted straight back to a nurse waiting to take my vitals.
If you don’t get in the little room--where you’ll wait for at least an hour--45 minutes after you get there, then it takes even longer. There’s a system. It’s not a great system, but it’s there.
Doctor’s offices are the DMV of today.
I have to force myself to only arrive 15 minutes early because I’ve got the “don’t be late” thing where I’m usually a tad early.
Also, why give me a 1 pm appointment then, on the reminder message, tell me to get there 15 minutes early? I’ve got a schedule, too.
Only once or twice I felt their “arrive 15 minutes early” was justified, for filling out paperwork at an intake appointment. Aside from that, “please arrive 15 minutes early” is just their condescending way of letting us know they don’t trust us to show up on time.
imo, they should make 2 appointments, then. One for the physician and one, 15 minutes earlier, for the paperwork. Or at least give a heads up when you make the appointment, instead of 3 months later when they send your the reminder text.
Yeah this is probably some American shit. If I have appointment at 08:00, and doctor takes me in at 08:01, they’ll apologize for being late
Which country?
Also, it’s a bit of a tradeoff. If the doc cares about the patients, some will naturally take longer than others. The only way to stay on time would be to schedule a lot of buffer. Which would be fine if they could do that and still make a decent living. But even universal healthcare places are always trying to squeeze on paying doctors. So it’s hard to get both on time, and enough time to really get the most out of the appointment.
Of course this post is about the clinics that are being bought up by corporations in the US and being enshitified to maximize shareholder value. So yeah, American shit for sure.
In 3 countries I’ve lived in this is a thing. Some doctors more than others.
Every. Single. Time.
I was just bitching about this last month.
