Me: 30 minutes past my appointment (after arriving 20 minutes early) watching people walk in then get called back within 3 minutes. Fuck doctors offices so much.
Update: Nurse took me to the room. Answered prelim questions then she left. Still waiting for the doctor 20 minutes later. It is now 40 minutes past my appointment time and no sign of the person taking my money.
It really is infuriating. Especially when you get threatening reminders like ‘be sure to be here exactly on time or we’ll bill you/yell at you’.
I show up for everything at least 20 minutes early at the latest. Meanwhile I’ve had scheduled appointments run 45 minutes late.
Clearly they expect me respect THEIR time, while completely disrespecting mine.
The real problem with this is inaccurate blood pressure readings.
Run a social psych experiment. Tell 100 people to show up and claim a $10 gift card. They must arrive 15 mins early. They will receive their $10 at a specific time.
Randomize the 100 people’s actual receipt time to be somewhere between 5 mins early and 45 mins late.
Come in, explain they just need to do a blood pressure reading first, and then they will receive the $10.
The doctors that are late to the appointment are late because they are taking the extra time to listen to and treat their patients. Private equity firms have standardized back to back appointments of 15 minutes for every patient, and enforce that every slot be filled. It is not possible to provide adequate healthcare in that timeframe. Every good doctor I’ve worked with is always on time to the first appointment, and later and later as the day goes on. Every scum bag doctor I’ve worked with was on time to every appointment, and never really treated a single patient. Be mad at private equity, not the doctors doing a good job.
But as doctors, was there no fight back against this. I don’t know how. But genuinely asking. Like if a plumbers knew some new law came in that endangered people and they just went with it, are they not responsible
When this became the norm, they had little recourse. At the moment, there’s a crazy shortage; they could stand against it now. But there’s already too few doctors to see people, Trying to see less people to make it more convenient would go against trying to help people when there aren’t enough doctors as it is
Why even work with private equity then?
Why is it so hard for a group of doctors to set up their own practice?
Private Equity takes care of all the legwork; rent, admin, staff, patient flow. Not that groups can’t do this, it’s outsourced so that they can see more patients and bill more, ironically reducing patient care because profit.
Trex nailed it in their reply. And doctors do set up their own practices-- and every successful practice has been bought out.
True story… I used to go to a fairly large physician owned clinic network. They sold out to optum. Now care gets worse every year. Luigi, you listening buddy?
Private equity needs to be heavily, restrictively regulated. They have repeatedly demonstrated that they are a caustic and exploitative market influence pretty much across the board if they’re given even the tiniest bit of leash.
yes. insurance companies in particular are too much for independent doctors to negotiate with. they would rather pay $100 for a shitty appointment where nothing is solved than $200 where something is actually done about the problem (such as treatments or tests, which they would also probably have to pay for).
Liability insurance. If a small practice gets sued (and they will get sued), the insurance gets too expensive for the practice to be a going concern. Only way to survive this is by joining a large conglomerate who has their own legions of lawyers. Source: father-in-law who had a successful general surgery practice for 30 years before being essentially forced into retirement or to join a huge system. He chose the former.
I’ve had a doctor literally come out into the waiting room and sit down and talk golf and stocks with someone for 30 minutes during my appointment time. Other times I’ve been the first appointment in the morning and the doctor has come in 30-40 minutes late anyway. A couple of times I could hear them in the hallway having a friendly chat with someone about something that has nothing to do with patients or the practice. None of my doctors are part of private equity companies and all have 20 minute appointment times.
There’s no question that many doctors are decent, but a full 50% of them are below average.
If you were right about this, most every doctor I’ve seen is good. They definitely aren’t though. The reverse has been true in my experience. One doctor had me wait 2 hours past the appointment time, then, shocker, wasted a lot more of my time and money, and my problem was never addressed. He never even seemed to understand what the problem was (and he should have, I explained it several times). He referred me to a doctor that was literally in the process of retiring and said he told the referring doctor this. The story gets even longer but suffice it to say I wasted thousands of dollars and several hours for nothing. And this was consistent with my experience other places too. Unreasonable wait times have occurred alongside really terrible doctors for me.
They are optimizing for Doctor’s time, not yours. He is the one being paid to be there. Your wait is free.
My wait is not free, if I’m not at work I’m losing money, I’m not taking care of things at home, I’m not doing who knows what else I could be doing. The wasting of my time is not free.
If anything, MY time should be prioritized because I’m the one PAYING to be here.
It’s not free to you, but you’re not the one scheduling the appointments.
Is that how a proper society works.
Nope
I had an appointment at 11am last week. They saw me at 3.30pm. One of the guys waiting had sandwiches with him, he’d obviously been there before…
you are fined if you don’t cancel in less than 24 hours notice or maybe 48 but we cancel after you get there and pay no renumeration for it. lol.
You guys need better doctors jfc
It’s the expected effect of our healthcare industry / our governments sentiment towards it’s own civilian population. Treating people this way ensures maximum profit margin.
In a similar vein, our EPA recently derated the economic value of a human life to $0.00. Used to be some bogus number like $2.5mil or whatever that the average individual contributes to the GDP over their lifetime. How can you insure an asset that has no value?
It would not surprise me to see OSHA fully eliminated within the next 6 months, because what’s the purpose of protecting the working force if the economy doesn’t need them?
Christ almighty, we’ve rotted from the inside out. We don’t have a recognized party that actually cares about people.
It’s the for-profit American health system
that’s why 2/3 of the population has no GP and is just using urgent care. No appt, cheaper to the insurance, they still see you faster than the actual appointment
Cheaper to the insurance in the short term. More expensive for everyone in the long term since nobody bothers with preventative care anymore.
also good point
Found Larry David’s Lemmy account
Coincidentally, people say I look like Larry. Personally, I think I look pretty, pretty, uuhh pretty good.
Found eric andré’s account!
Ranch it up
That’s “I, America, ‘n’ Dre”.
Had the fun of waiting 60min for my appointment (I was 10min early).
Feel youOne time I had a cold and needed to see the doc because of work.
Got an appointment for later during consultation hours and was misreable in the hallway because 15 other patients were waiting before me.
Later went back, was led into an examination room and had again to wait 30min until the doc came to examine me.
I waited 120min with a misreable cold in the hallway with several other sick humans (very great) during cold season.
I know the practice is overworked but cmon ;-;I’ve had the same observation before. They insist you’re there early, and don’t really care if they make you wait an hour or more past your appointment time. But if you’re there 5 minutes late? Appointment canceled, pay $50.
Once had an appointment where the doctor was an hour behind, so I was just waiting in a room, then they billed that as extra time spent on the appointment
It’s so great here!
That sounds like straight up insurance fraud
in civilised countries this is a good idea as patients have a nasty habit of not turning up
I give them 5 minutes unless there’s an emergency, then it’s 15. After that I reschedule, or move to a different doctor.
Any practice that can’t keep a schedule, isn’t worth working with. Worst case scenario, take a vacation to Mexico and talk to a doctor there. Cheaper, faster, and probably better care than a US general practitioner.
Many years ago I had an orthopoedic surgeon that was always late. 30-40 minutes ofttimes. Yes, it was an inconvenience, but first appointment with him this happened, I was irritated about it until he got in the room. He was contrite and apologetic and had incredibly good bedside manners. He spoke to you and not dismissively down as many docs can. He listened completely to what I had to say and welcomed questions. All of this ended up taking much longer than a normal get in/out physician. Now I understood why and accepted his tardiness as I wanted that extra care he so readily dispensed. Great doctor, but now long retired.
Good doctors often have more incentive to overbook, and even less incentive to stop bad office practices as long as people keep putting up with it.
That’s reasonable if it’s regular- of course, with healthcare being expensive, I’m not surprised that even when it’s not a complex issue that takes time, the patient might decide to offload a dozen issues at once instead of making a dozen appointments- making this a structural issue, not specific to your doctor.
Our pediatrician from years ago left the group practice he was in to do his own thing, partially so he could get away from the numbers game and have longer appointment slots so time could be taken to address any concerns that come up. Actually talk to the patient. Great doctor. He first impressed us when he brought us in the room, then talked to our son first.
He ended up retiring after a lot of years simply because he couldn’t afford to do it the “right” way any longer.
Let’s be honest, when was the last time anyone actually saw a doctor when they were scheduled to?
Kind of wish we could walk out and send them a “cancelled appointment fee” after 15 minutes.
A few weeks ago, for the first time in my life, they got to my appointment EARLY. And not just 30 seconds early. I’m talking 20 minutes. I was flabbergasted.
It’s possible that you filled a No Show slot
That’s absolutely what happened
Hopefully the doctor was able to degast your flabbers!
I had an allergy reaction test with my son last week. It’s a two hours test where he eats an increasingly bigger portion of allergen to see if he is still allergic.
We arrive 15 mins early for our scheduled start at 9:15. We are the first of the day for the test. 9:55 we finally see the doctor. The first appointment of the day starts late by 40 mins.
The appointment before that one, we were scheduled at 10:00. By 11:45, we still haven’t seen the doctor to start the two hour test. And I’m being told that this is normal by a nurse.
Just fucking infuriating all around.
Some doctors are always late. Some are occasionally late. Some are only late at the end of their shift. If yours is always late and cancels your appointment unless you show up early, they don’t respect your time. Get a new doctor. Their front desk should be able to cope with you showing up near your real appointment time.
I’ve recently had several appointments with a specialist. Most of them required me to show up between 0615 and 0630.
He doesn’t come in until 0800.
