Why are you gobsmacked that they would charge for missed appointments? When you don’t show up for your appointment, you’re taking money out of their pockets. That’s time they could have been seeing another patient and generating some income, and instead they have nothing. Even if they use that time to deal with someone who was early, or who needed more time than they’d anticipated, they’re still seeing one patient fewer and thus making less money. They’d be crazy not to charge for missed appointments.
Yes, $145 is a lot of money, but that’s the minimum of what you cost the practice by not showing. Pay up. And quit signing forms without reading them.
I have never paid for missed appointments. I never will pay for missed appointments. I certainly wouldn’t pay $145. I don’t make a habit of missing appointments but it does happen every so often, that’s life. The doctors know this and try to make money off you for no work. If I knew I would be seen by the doctor right away when I go I might feel different. Since the doctor doesn’t feel that my time is worth anything, why should I feel differently about him? I am paying for a service. If I don’t receive that service I don’t pay.
Could be because an Orthopedist is a specialist. For a General Practitioner, I would have to pay about $50 for a missed appointment. That is spelled out on the paperwork I fill out on my fist visit (the stuff where you fill in your address any allergies to medications etc.)
I would expect to pay a subtatially higher fee for a specialist (neorologist, ophthamoloist etc.)
Keapon Laffin - If you really can’t make it (say due to a funeral or something) then you are supposed to give 24 hours notice. If it’s something sudden, like you were hit by a bus on the way there, they may wave it. (But that’s even a little iffy because it encourages people to say “my grandma died last night… again.”) Other calamity-type stuff usually gets waived or negotiated if you whine and say “oh, come on…” like the Northeast Blackout of 2003 or ice storms. It would have been ridiculous to expect people to keep appointments.
In my experience, it’s common for doctors to charge you for the full cost of an appointment (including what insurance would have covered) if you don’t show. As it was explained to me by more than one doctor, they can’t bill the insurance company if you aren’t there, which is why you have to pay the entire cost, not just your co-pay. Your doctor should have made this policy clear to you, along with the fact that if you give a sufficient amount of notice (usually 24 hours) you can cancel an appointment with no penalty.
One of the counselors here has his own mental health practice in the evenings. He charges the whole price of a visit for no shows. He gets very few no shows as a result.
My husband is also a therapist after hours, but does fee for service through an agency. There is no charge for no show and he gets lots of them.
Sounds like extortion to me. Does a mechanic get to charge for the repair because you forgot to bring your car in? Is it different because he doesn’t have a degree? He probably has more overhead and more people working for him than a doctor. I don’t pay and it has never affected me. There was one doctor who made it a point that he would charge full price for any missed visits. I went once and he never got my business again. Thousands of dollars lost against the $150 fee he would have charged for a possible missed appointment.
Having said that, I would like to add that I can understand it more from counselors and mental health professionals. From my limited experience I could see that they can’t overbook patients. If there is a no-show it’s an hour of lost time. I would be more inclined to pay a fee (not the full ammount) for a missed appointment with a counselor.
I’m more or less compulsively punctual, and this one definitely bugs me. Lots of interesting reasons are given:
“A doctor’s time is valuable.” [Right - and mine isnt.]
“Some procedures take longer than anticipated - you wouldn’t want us to rush, would you?” [No, but realistic allotment of time might help.]
“Since there are occasional no-shows, it’s sometimes necessary to overbook a bit.” [And to inconvenience those who keep their appointments, while pocketing money from the no-shows.]
“Often, patients are late and this causes the whole schedule to slide.” [So offer refunds to those who are delayed out of the money charged those who are late.]
Since that’s right in line with what my worker’s comp was charged for each of my office visits for my hand last year, it appears to be the going rate for an office visit with an orthopod. If he’d showed, they would have at the very least charged for the office visit, right?
I agree that this is standard practice. My doctor has a 24 hour rule, so I can cancel up until the day before. I’m lucky in that he also understands the value of my time and operates his practice accordingly. When I have a 10am appointment, I’m going to be talking to the doctor at 10am or before. He runs a tight ship and I appreciate it. Consequently, if I ever missed an appointment without the proper notification, I’d pay in an instant. I understand the rules and I play by them.
Never mind that they’ll keep YOU waiting until they get around to doing their job.
I’m kind of ambivalent about the whole thing. Yes, when you no-show you’ve cost the doctor money. However, when the doctor’s office books 6 appointments in a one-hour time slot and then keeps you waiting for an hour and a half, after which you physically see the doctor for 5 minutes, I think they’ve got a lot of balls to charge you for wasting THEIR time.
FWIW $145 sounds a bit high to me, especially since your appointment sounded like it was going to be one of those “How’s the shoulder? Good? Ok, seeya” kind of things.
*Almost all doctor’s offices around here will call you the day before your appointment to remind you, though.
I agree, although my counselor has never charged me for missed appointments.
For a normal doctor, considering the fact that they habitually overbook, etc., a nominal fee would be fair; charging the full appt. fee is pretty crappy.
Because if Gary T cancels with 24 hours notice, it’s very likely that I can move CrazyCatLady into that slot and make the budget for the week.It doesn’t really matter to the doctor at that point that Gary T’s isn’t paying her, because CrazyCatLady’s visit makes up for it. If he doesn’t give me enough time to call her, I can’t get the time covered and so we lose the entire amount of money Gary T would have owed at the end of his visit. It’s not even so bad to miss one appointment, but what generally happens is that 5 to 10 patients blow her off in one week, and that’s a huge chunk of our projected income just gone.
Between no-shows, insurance percentage payments and delays in insurance payments, it’s really incredible that lots of doctors manage to stay in business at all. If in private practice, they have a huge amount of overhead costs, such as rent, utilities, paying staff, medical supplies and even hand soap and toilet paper. Those file folders don’t pay for themselves, either. Medical malpractice insurance rates are through the roof - forcing many of the OB’s in my area to shut down or switch to G.P. Doctors aren’t making the kind of money your grandmother told you they are. The average salary for a Family Practice doc in 2002 was $147,516, according to this site. Orthopedics pays much better, at an average of $346,224, but also has a much wider range.
FTR, I think double booking is abhorrent and should not happen. Where I last worked booking appointments, we reduced the fees for patients if the acupuncturist was over 10 minutes late. But in order for this to work, we had to be super-dilligent about making sure we collected on missed appointments, otherwise we’d end up at the end of the week with not enough money to pay the pharmacy staff! We were very understanding about last minute emergencies, but “I forgot” isn’t one. “My kid broke her leg at school” “The El collapsed” or “My mom just died” were all acceptable, and we wouldn’t charge - unless your daughter broke her leg every week. We did keep track of these things.
My father has a policy – the first appointment you miss, you get a stern phone call; any subsequent appointment you miss, you have to pay for in full. In practice, my parents’ niceness usually get the better of them for at least three missed appointments before they really start charging. It may sound a little draconian, but my dad doesn’t overbook, so that really is time he spent sitting around that would’ve been filled with another patient if you’d canceled even six to eight hours prior.
It’s not exactly sleazy but a little gouging IMHO not to cut you slack for the first visit you miss, especially if this doctor does overbook, but it’s within reason. It does seem to signify that the doctor’s office isn’t very friendly to new patients, but again, maybe they get a lot of people who forget their appointments or something. Mostly, I’m surprised they didn’t call you the day of or the day before the appointment to remind you. If they consistently don’t do that, they probably DO get a lot of no-shows.
It is indeed standard practice for most practitioners to charge for missed appointments. Nothing wrong with that. What I do appreciate from my dentist is that his office always calls me about a week ahead of time to remind me of my appointment. That helps. After all, sometimes when appointments are far apart, they can slip your mind. IMHO, any practitioner who charges a huge fee to a patient for a first-time missed appointment is in essence telling the patient that I don’t value your future business. In that case, you should just pay the doctor and say hasta la vista.
If your business is selling TV sets and you have a store with a finite number of TV sets then you can’t give them away and stay in business.
A doctor has a finite number of time slots per week and he sells them to make a living. Asking if you can have one for free is like asking for a free TV set.
A better example would be if you have a finite number of TV sets and you sell TV sets X2. It’s much easier to stay in business when you sell twice your inventory. It’s not very good for your customers and it doesn’t hurt you too much when someone doesn’t pick up one of the sets.
I saw a thing on tv once about a guy that had had “Just About Enough” of that routine and charged the doctor HIS OWN hourly rate of $250. Took the doctor to court and won!!!