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Send the doc a bill for your time. If he refuses to pay send to collections. They most certainly do that to us.

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Reasons my patients had to wait for me on ONE day this week.  

Diabetic emergency, a new diagnosis so I was spending a boatload of time trying to figure out why his vital signs were all mixed up.  After I figured it all out and made sure he wasn't going to die.  To the hospital to be admitted.

Elderly lady fell down the stairs at facility.  Xrays, full body exam (family begged me to do it, because they have no faith in the care facility).  So, I am there in a small room with a family, trying to undress an elderly lady in a walker and perform all my normal duties while trying to run down and examine her Xrays and fill out all these referals etc they brought for me, NOT a 30 minute visit.

A guy with shortness of breath.  Probably should have just sent him to the ER when I first laid eyes on him, BUT I try to actually diagnose and treat people when I see them.  Ultimately, he had significant EKG changes and bradycardia. Probably an MI.  To the emergency room and probably cardiology intervention he goes.

These people threw me hours behind my schedule.  

Now, funny thing.  If you are the first patient and your doctor comes in 45 minutes late with his bicycle helmet still on and tells you he was late because he got caught up with another patient.  He is most likely an a hole.   I had a doctor pull that crap on me.  LOL, he works with my wife, who told him later that the jig was up.  Ironically the institution fired him for some B.S totally unrelated.

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Take the first available appointment in the AM. I don't blame you OP, it's the only industry where it has some how become acceptable to keep people waiting.

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Should of left a dump on the exam table as a specimen sample

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Walked in 15 minutes early.

Waiting room one hour.

Back room thirty minutes.

No doc.

Bye bye

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I sat in an examination room for an hour.  Timed it to the second.  Grabbed my chart off the door and left.  They called me on the phone before I got out of the parking lot and demanded the chart back, said it was their property.   I told them they weren't my doctor anymore and didn't need my info.  That was the end of it.

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Slightly off topic but a long time ago I worked in a hospital (Bio-Med Tech), the guy that fixes all the electronic medical equipment.  Think defibrillators, X-ray machines, Lab instruments, etc.  Got on the elevator one time the same instant that a Dr got on, I pushed the top floor button before the Dr pushed the basement button (Cafeteria), he went ballistic "You think your time is more important than mine", I couldn't believe the arrogance.   I said, "To me it is!" as I stepped off the elevator I pushed every button, and said have a nice trip down.  Called my boss right away and said if an ahole Dr calls Admin this is what happened.

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That was still pretty awesome! Doc should take the stairs. We had a rule on rounds in med school. Up 2, down 4. Unless you were going up more than two floors or down more than four stories, the team took the stairs.

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Been many years but still ticks me off. My first wife had debilitating MS, wheelchair etc.
She had a 3 PM appt with a specialist.
4 PM comes and I ask the desk when the Dr will get to her -- "oh, very soon now."
5 PM comes and the staff starts turning all the lights off. WTF? "Oh, you are still here? The Dr went home 45 minutes ago"

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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.

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It's been done before and worked (at least once).
Patient charges doctors for making her wait

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so you came here to tell everyone you screwed yourself and bragged about being impatient, and it still cost you money.  I could think of better ways to spend my money and time

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Take the first available appointment in the AM. I don't blame you OP, it's the only industry where it has some how become acceptable to keep people waiting.

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Reasons my patients had to wait for me on ONE day this week.  

Diabetic emergency, a new diagnosis so I was spending a boatload of time trying to figure out why his vital signs were all mixed up.  After I figured it all out and made sure he wasn't going to die.  To the hospital to be admitted.

Elderly lady fell down the stairs at facility.  Xrays, full body exam (family begged me to do it, because they have no faith in the care facility).  So, I am there in a small room with a family, trying to undress an elderly lady in a walker and perform all my normal duties while trying to run down and examine her Xrays and fill out all these referals etc they brought for me, NOT a 30 minute visit.

A guy with shortness of breath.  Probably should have just sent him to the ER when I first laid eyes on him, BUT I try to actually diagnose and treat people when I see them.  Ultimately, he had significant EKG changes and bradycardia. Probably an MI.  To the emergency room and probably cardiology intervention he goes.

These people threw me hours behind my schedule.  

Now, funny thing.  If you are the first patient and your doctor comes in 45 minutes late with his bicycle helmet still on and tells you he was late because he got caught up with another patient.  He is most likely an a hole.   I had a doctor pull that crap on me.  LOL, he works with my wife, who told him later that the jig was up.  Ironically the institution fired him for some B.S totally unrelated.

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That will teach the Dr. a lesson they won't soon forget.

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

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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!

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OOF!  You would be fully justified in a 10/10 star flip-out come-apart right there. If that was my screw-up, I'd be turning back around, seeing that patient for free, apologizing profusely and probably getting some kind of gift card too. That is not cool! Mistakes happen, but there's some major process and workflow issues going on there.

Our urgent care has 10 rooms plus a procedure room and a cardiac room. And I have a recurring nightmare that I've forgotten a patient in a room for several hours.

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6) Work is work and that’s why they pay you to be there, but with so many jobs available out there paying the same or more than the medical field, the medical system will continue to spiral downward.  I am powerless to fix this.  Hospital corporations have managed to take all the fun out of medicine, and it has become what I can only describe as soul-crushing.  Colleagues are retiring as soon as they can.  I had two, both age 60, retire in March and the second one at the end of this month.  The new docs coming in want to “balance work with life” and just punch in and punch out.  No fucks given.  This is a symptom of a sick medical system.  The government and hospital corporations have completely destroyed the medical culture over the last 20 years.  Bravo.

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Its the front office staff. The days of a woman that been working there for 20 years and ran the office like a bootcamp are long gone. Now, its some  chola complete with hand tattoo that doesn't give a shit except when its time to leave.

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Yes I know what you’re talking about. My doctor was an hour late. Got called for an emergency surgery.

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I always pick the last appointment of the day around 410pm. The office closes at 5pm so I am never there to long.

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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

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Take the first available appointment in the AM. I don't blame you OP, it's the only industry where it has some how become acceptable to keep people waiting.

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I'm a specialist and I will be one of the first to tell people that the breadth of knowledge a PCP has to know is far more than people typically think, so you're bullshit about it being a fucking scam is so far off base.  A good PCP is one who is knowledgeable about all specialties, is good at undifferentiated workups, and knows when to ask for help. A good PCP is absolutely irreplaceable and vastly underpaid.  

And let's clear up definitions, a GP is a general practitioner, which is used to describe someone who did an internship and then started working, those are exceedingly rare in this day and age. A PCP is either a family practice trained doc or an internal medicine trained doc.

There are many docs who are horrible at time management, there are practices that have to double book due to high no show rates if they want to be able to pay the bills and even those of who are better at time management but then acutely sick pts take time, emergencies at the hospital, fucking peer to peer insurance approvals, oftern are scheduled with a 4-6 hour window, then you spend 10-20 minutes repeating the same shit that's in the note to talk to some wash out doc or someone who is not even remotely in your specialty to argue over what pts need. Computers take a shit, or even making doc to doc phone calls to corrdinate care take time.

I feel for younger docs, they are graduating with huge loans, they lost a decade of income potential compared to their college peers and are joining in the face of declining reimbursement or loss of autonomy by being forced to join hospital groups since hospitals get paid more than independent docs for the same services.