Airlines do too

I've seen more Drs. in the last 6 years than I did in the prior 56.  Those who said get the earliest appointment you can are on the right track.  They end up going overtime on the patients and it snowballs until it gets to you.  I also get there early, which seems to help.  Most of my appts are now with the Oncologist, and up until January when he left to go work for big pharma, he took limited appts because he was the head of the department.  His replacement doesn't seem to be as good.

Most of the staff know me by name since I see them once a month.  They are all part of a large health care system in the Detroit area and surprisingly, they are almost always courteous and prompt.

I understand airlines especially now that there are quite a few female pilots now

Ha Ha I have one that beats that.

I showed up to my doctors appointment at 8:40am appointment is 9:00am. I sit in waiting room until 9:55am, then I finally get called back. As I'm being walked back to the exam room in the back of the office, my doctor walks in the back door and almost runs into me. He's pushing his road bike in the back to his office, sweating, still wearing his biking outfit and all the other things you would wear on a bike ride. I then proceeded to sit in the exam room for another half hour while I guess he was cleaning up.
I had to get a prescription refilled with a blood test so I couldn't walk out. I was short with him when he did enter and I changed doctors right afterwards.

That is not only bullshit, but insurance fraud. Your insurance company would definitely like to know there were no services performed and he was wrongfully reimbursed. The office can surely charge you if they have a policy in place. They cannot bill your insurance company for that. Seriously, call your insurance company...

The biggest fuckin scam is that 99% of the shit your GP does for you, you can do yourself with a little reading.

Me too.

Great guy and I'm in and out.

I could see that.  An hour or two of missed work could range between nothing and thousands of dollars for some folks.

OPs doctor is punching air right now

Drove 60mi to my appointment yesterday get checked in and they asked what time my appointment was I said 1315 why? Well we changed your appointment to 0915 this morning. Nobody called txt email nothing, didn't even get an I'm sorry but hey we can reschedule for Monday! This is my pain management doc too

One of my FIL's doctors was like that, only worse. People would wait 3+ hours. Apparently he was good at his specialty, but I would've found a new dr.

Have Bill call me.

This.   They can't always avoid running behind but you can be first in line.

This. First thing or not at all. The pediatrician is the worst, we've never seen the doctor with 30 minutes of our appointment time. I've told my wife to call when leaving the house and tell them we're in the parking lot so that by the time she gets there it'll only be a 10-20 minute wait.

I too,  have noticed this same thing.

I have a friend who is a Doc and his wife has to be in the room when the pharma rep is meeting with him.

I hate that crap.  They call, email, and text multiple times to make sure you are going to be there for your appointment, you show up early/on time, and then you sit there for 45 minutes waiting on them.

Most of these visits you can do over telehealth, this driving into see providers is out dated. Push your providers to do video visits for things that really have no need to be seen in person, bedside “that the way it’s always been”.

If anyone does this. Please take a small wooden stake and sign that says, Amber Turd.

If I can visit a doctor over the computer I think I can do without a Dr appointment all together.

Several years ago I was in a medical waiting room and picked up some magazine.  On one of the pages filled with 2-3 sentence blurbs it said the average wait-time in a Dr's office in the US was 1 hour.

Ridiculous! - I thought it was crazy.

Within a month I walked out of one of my treatment rooms and looked at the appointment book at the front desk - I was one hour behind.

Right after that I completely abandoned scheduling X patients per hour and started putting people down for the amount of time it could be reasonably predicted they needed, with the specific intention of leaving a little bit of room to reduce the overlap of people to the minimum and some ability to squeeze in something urgent once or twice a day ~ on top of my normally reserved spaces for new patients during the week.

I and my patients have been much happier ever since.

When a provider tells you they "can't" spend more than X minutes with you the truth is they WON'T.

Did that one time. Doc had flat tire.

I've dumped a couple medical drs after numerous times of telling their staff not to call, text or email me. Now when I'm signing on with a new doctor they do not get an email and they do get a lecture on not reminding me.

How are you gonna make any money actually spending more than 5 minutes with a patitent?

Porsches don't have run flats?

Only make early Doctors' appointments.  8am 9am maybe 10am.  Nothing later or backups will occur.  

Prob a good thing you left, someone would have stolen your wallet while you were getting x-rayed.

I pay for concierge medicine.  I have my dr's cell number and personal email.  I have 24/7 access and can get a same day appointment.  He went from about 2,000 patients down to 400. It costs me about $100 extra per month and it's worth every penny the few times I've needed his immediate attention.

I get several hours of tests every year as part of my physical and being subscribed to his service that I would never get from a regular PCP.  I've been with him for 20 years and we're the same age.....I'm actually 1 day older than him.

My neurologist runs 3 hours late regularly. The other two in his practice are 10 minutes or less with every patient and never behind, they just check the box to refill your medicine another year. He's worth it and puts serious time in with everyone.  I make sure to book the first appointment of the day as he's never late for that,  unless he demands a 30 day follow up and then I'm screwed.

Kharn

A few years ago I had the flu. Rather than drive 45 minutes to the closest Kaiser building, I went to a local Patients First urgent care place.

Place was a zoo and took forever. Probably 45 mins in the waiting room and we’ll over an hour in the exam room before doctor appeared. Done like 10 minutes later.

A week or two later I randomly got a letter from the President of the company apologizing for the wait and how it wasn’t up to their company standards. That was a surprise to get in the mail. Usually you just wait all day at the doctor and that’s life.

my worst was waiting 2 hours and 15 minutes in a specialist's waiting room, then another 20 minutes in the exam room ... for a 2 minute appointment where he
told me the MRI showed nothing wrong with my back.

Sometimes that works but sometimes the doctors office over books the mornings for "emergencies".  My doctor opens at 8, first appointment might be 8:15 and I had the 8:30.  Like the OP I had a 45 minute wait in the waiting room and a 45 minute wait in the back room.  How does the 1st or 2nd appointment, typically 15 minute slots, of the day end up as the 7th appointment time wise?  That only happened once and his office has gotten a lot better since then.  

Same.  

RE, someones comment:  If I can visit a doctor over the computer I think I can do without a Dr appointment all together.



It’s ok if you don’t understand telehealth, many don’t or didn’t 2 years.  Now most patients prefer if for visits for follow up for surgery, lab results, PAT, psyc, stuff that would be handled at urgent care that is not urgent.  100k-200k visits a year can’t be wrong, with patients saying they get the same care over video 90%+ of the time.

Sounds like my GP. I did go find another but not much better.

If I show up early they'll take me in early. My doc is great. I go shooting with him

Any appointments like this I always schedule it to be the first person to be seen in the morning.

When I set an appointment I expect people to keep their time commitment with me.

Family doc did that.  I left the little room and expressed my displeasure, then demanded my file.

They said they could give me copies for a $1 a page fee.

I did I had paid at every step to have the originals generated in the first place.  Give me the originals.

They did.  Helped that a busy waiting room was watching it all go down.

same thing here.  usually an hour late at least...
why dont dentists or eye doctors pull this bullshit?  whats so "special" about this group?

Wife is a triple board certified doctor (i.e. 3x doctor). It's not her when she's late unless you're the first patient of the day.

She's late because 75% of the fucking patients do one/many/all of the following:

- Show up late. For some fucking reason having an appointment at 9 to most people seems to mean, lets leave the house at 855.
- Have next to nothing filled out and available even though they were contacted 1-2+ times by staff beforehand to ensure that they had their shit ready. So instead of being seen at their appointment time, they're sitting in the waiting room making retard faces while trying to fill out paperwork they should have had done before even showing up.
- No show/no call and then appear out of nowhere 4 hours later
- Have other shitty doctors/clinics scheduled them for the scan/blood work/test they need the results for at the visit literally 15 minutes before the visit so that not only will they be late, but will also have 0 test results
- Patients who decide that the clinic is a fucking daycare and/or bring 72 family members with them, all with questions, especially the daughter in law who is a nurse at a podiatrists office who has a list of questions she scraped together off of a deep dive into WebMD and doesn't understand shit about fuck
- The patient(s) before you who didn't do a fucking thing they were told last time and are now 50 times worse off and waited for it 'to be fixed' at this appointment

And then the one where you might have some area to gripe with, but my wife doesn't do because she told them to go fuck themselves when they tried - administration that looks at everything as 'if we could see 3x the patients wed make 3x the money!1!!' and attempt to force clinics/physicians to be triple booked.

That's why they're late. It's all the fucking retards doing retard shit, before you.

They do work for you. I understand if someone maybe late once. I expect an apology. I would. The second time, I would fire them and complain to my insurance that they do not listen to the ones who pay their wages. If I am late I owe an apology, if it is a habit I need to be replaced. This is the market we love to say self regulates. My last two dentist refused to realize this. Neither one is accepted by by current plan.

prescriptions

why does she makes innocent patients pay the price in time for the fuckups of other patients?

This post and the responses nicely encapsulate why I don't do family medicine any more. Did it for 5.5 years. And I really hated running late. One of my partners consistently ran 1 hour late. The other was variable, perhaps 30-60 minutes. This was a small town and we also covered the ER (right next door). And we delivered babies. So I would regularly get pulled out of a room or called to the ER in between patients. But I usually ran pretty close to on time. And I'm never late to work now that I work urgent care. I'm seeing the first patient right at 9.

There is not just one reason why your doctor is late. There are a dozen. Here's a few:

-You're not paying the doctor. Your insurance is paying the doctor. If we have a 15 minute visit, I bill a 99213 and get paid $75-90. If we go 30 minutes, I bill a 99214 and get paid $100-140. I get paid more for cranking a lot of visits, not for taking time with the patient. Unlike a lawyer, who gets paid more if they spend longer, I get paid more if I crank more visits. Stuffing more patients into the schedule pays better. And if one gets mad and leaves, there's another one who will take that appointment and the wait.

This is clearly illustrated by those who have a concierge physician. You pay a monthly fee or retainer rate. You get visits whenever you want and typically get immediate cell phone access with your doctor. Cutting out insurance completely is most likely to bring back market forces to this aspect of medicine. If I ever went back to family medicine, I would only consider doing it for direct patient care/concierge model. You pay me directly. I have every incentive to perform well and take good care of you.

-Patients want to cover everything and the kitchen sink at their visit. And this makes perfect sense from their perspective. They paid their copay and don't want to come back for another visit to cover more stuff and pay another copay. This is intentional and orchestrated tension and conflict caused by insurance companies. Patients rightly complain about the long wait. And once they're in the room with the doctor, suddenly they want to visit and take all the time in the world. Let's talk about my laundry list of 15 items, which I have written down in detail and I want to read all of it to you. Either you doctor takes the time and goes through all this ("Oh, he's a great doctor but he always runs late"), or he cuts you off ("the doctor didn't spend any time with me"). I'd love to spend 45 minutes with patients (well, most of them), but scheduling 10 patients all day doesn't cover the overhead. And as a practice owner, I don't get paid until all the bills are covered.

-The 'hand on the doorknob' or the 'oh, just one more thing phenomenon'. We've just started to wrap up the visit and the patient says why they really made the appointment. Or, they say they're having crushing chest pain. Okay, now we're going to work that up right now, do an EKG, call an ambulance. I cannot ignore it. I cannot reschedule it. I must act on this right now. And something unplanned like this happens every single day. Every day. And that just blew 30 minutes.

Now I do urgent care. There is no schedule and there is no running late. You might sit in the waiting room for a while, especially Monday morning. We take people as they come in. Usually first come, first served. Some things will get you to the front of the line. But you don't want those things. Not worrying about running late is one of the better parts of urgent care.

-Some doctors don't value your time or respect you. Yes, I know physicians who schedule patients at 9A and don't plan to be there until 10. This is insane and it's annoying that they're still in business. But they'll still get paid by your insurance. See the theme here? Things got bad when Medicare started and it's gone downhill ever since.

-There are more and more financial pressures to keep a practice open. Spending longer with patients is definitely not something that will help that. Seeing more patient's will.

And finally, California_Kid mentioned this. And it won't be a popular opinion. For those who are enjoying ARFcom's weekly "why doctor's suck", this will be catnip.

- Unless you're Elon Musk or the rough equivalent, the doctor's time is more valuable than your time. And that's a capitalistic fact. Arrogant? Yes. Condescending? Yes. Aggravating? Yes. True? Yes. I just said the quiet part out loud, but we all know it.

As they say, don't hate the player. Hate the game. And there's plenty of games in healthcare, and none of them are pointed in favor of the patient. Getting rid of insurance, paying directly for your own care and only having catastrophic coverage would fix a lot of this. It would probably rip our codependent on-the-government-tit society to pieces in the process.

Hate away!

Ever heard that saying for people who complain about traffic? If you're in the traffic, you are the traffic.

It's not just all the retards before you. You're not special. We're all retards doing retarded shit.

And your post was awesome! I was both angry and laughing as I read it. Because it's spot on.

You dont pay a copay with your ObamaCare

That's a hospital administration question. The answer is; they don't care. My wife is just part of the 'boots on the ground' that get to deal with it on a daily basis.

Between administration run by dumb shit MBA's with no idea as to how shit actually works trying to triple book everyone to then also refusing to enact a policy to where you will be billed a 'no show' fee when you just decide to not show up for your appointments that could have had someone else scheduled into, thats what you get.

My point isn't that the system is/isn't fucked, because it is, and she'll be the first to tell you. It's that the people, much like our .gov, who can actually attempt to fix shit, just don't care.

She has gotten to the point multiple times where she had shut down her clinic and not allowed any new patients for 4-6 weeks at a time so she can give quality care to existing patients. Ironically, the first time she did that was the time some administration tards actually showed up to see what was going on and she told them to fuck off. These are also the same group of sociopaths who don't want to actually fix anything but want to try and limit physicians to X amount of time with patients regardless as to what is actually going on and/or needs to be done. Imagine showing up to find out you have cancer and then being told we have 26 minutes to figure it all out before I need to send you out the door. Yeah.

Administration literally is a top heavy cost with little benefit. Add their lack of doing anything remotely useful to the fact that 50% of patients are 15 or more minutes late and then have fuck all as far as prepared paperwork and information, and that's why your doctor isn't standing around being bored until your appointment time.

If I were a doc I'd deliberately piss off all you peons.  No shit.

Should have left a note.

I'm in the bathroom be back in 10 minutes.