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.
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.