It drove me nuts yesterday. It makes no sense at all. The person that ‘scedules’ appointments said she can’t see the schedule until the morning of that day. She said she can’t even see tomorrows schedule.
I was later called by a person that said they have a cancelation at 10:35 2 days from now. SO they can actually see a schedule it would appear.
Gross incompetence is the only explanation I can come up with.
Maybe it’s just that one person doing it for some reason and the policy hasn’t actually changed. My husband was at the doctor once and he encountered “we see you in the order you came here, not by your appointment time” which had never been the policy. He went up the food chain and apparently the person who did that was new and that had been the procedure at her previous job. Never happened again.
You know what’s even worse? Veterinarians. My vet’s booking six months out at least, for check ups and vaccines. For emergencies, it’s the emergency clinic. I pass that clinic all the time and ever since Covid, their parking lot is packed, like thirty or forty cars. There can be an eight hour wait to be seen there. Animals die in agony in that parking lot, waiting for medical attention. The vet shortage is a national crisis.
If it makes you feel any better, the NHS has similar problems. There used to be four or more doctors at the practice, now it’s often only one. Trying to get a same-day appointment by phoning at 8:30 am is almost impossible as there are loads of other people doing the same thing on auto-redial and then wasting time by griping about how long they had to wait.
Going to A&E is a poor substitute as they often have four-hour (or longer) waits for non-urgent cases. Our local hospital also has a “drop-in” clinic, but I have not tried it yet. I do hear that it works quite well though. Of course, since computer systems are not yet joined up, they can’t pull up information about your history.
And that’s kind of what I’m bitching about. I wasn’t trying to get a same day appointment. I just wanted to schedule an appointment for in a few days or week. Was told twice, that it’s impossible to do that. But clearly they do.
Incompetence, poor office training, poor office leadership, call it what you will, but it is a rampant problem with doctor’s (and dentist’s) offices.
The person who “schedules” appointments (let’s call her S) is probably correct in that she can only see the current day’s schedule. It is also likely that she doesn’t really understand the software. My assumption would be that nobody in the office really understands the software and are likely not using its full functionality.
Since 80% of what S has to use the software for is to receive incoming patients and handle day-of appointments, that’s what her training has consisted of. The person who called you back (let’s call them R) knows how to look at the advance schedule and handle cancellations, but only gets involved if S cannot handle it. This is why R was able to help you. It is not unlikely that in a small office, the newly hired S is afraid of being ridiculed if she has to refer everything to R, so she does the best she can with her poor understanding of the software or the situation.
As I said, I find such behavior is very, very common in doctor/dentist offices. In other situations where similar issues are dealt with (hotel reservations, golf tee-times, even auto-repair shops), you usually find much better response. My theory is that in these other situations, the person making the appointment/reservation is also the customer (the one who pays the bill). In doctor/dentist offices, the customer is most likely an insurance company and the patient is merely the job.
If the doctor/dentist pisses-off a patient, they will still get paid and the patient will likely return, regardless, since finding a new doctor that is convenient and accepts the insurance can be a hassle for the patient. If they piss-off the insurance company, it’s hell getting payment from the patient and the same insurance company likely handles a fair number of other patients.
This. I asked when the next appointment would be available, and they did not know. Ummm… What?
I’ve run into them at my own doctor’s office, and spoken with rest of the staff. (We’re on a friendly basis.) Sometimes it’s just that they’re stubborn and won’t listen, or feel a need to take control.
Fortunately for me, being friendly with the rest of the staff meant I could push it up the chain to their boss, and get the nonsense straightened out. (In my case, it was a refusal to schedule a new appointment in a timely manner because I’d missed a previous one.)
“Wait, if I click on the box for tomorrow in the little calendar it actually shows me what is on tomorrow’s schedule? What about next week? Wow, that works too! I never would have guessed.”
Atamasama used to work for a company that made patient scheduling software for medical clinics (as well as software for records and medical billing). All of this “I can’t see tomorrow’s schedule” bullshit is either an extremely incompetent employee or they are following the policy of a really incompetent manager.
But but but … why can’t it be both? 
Correlation may not be causation in the general case, but incompetent managers are very highly causative of, and therefore very highly correlated with, incompetent employees.
My medical offices have so many new staff it’s unbelie able. And that’s just the ones that can hire staff.
Maybe it would be simpler for them to ask all patients to start lining up on the sidewalk outside the office at 7:00 am. Then just see each patient in order.
I mean, it’s just not possible to use scheduling software, right? Just too complicated. Sure, some might say that this was handled fine before computers… The booking person had a big paper calendar, and they filled in the appointment times with a pencil. Cancellations were handled with the other end of the pencil. But this is impossible now, because nobody knows how to plug the calendar in.
The day I got my positive COVID test, I was told I’d need to be seen at urgent care.
I called - and was given an “appointment” time of 6:20 that evening. OK.
I was finally seen about 8:30.
Next time I need urgent care, I’m going to a different location.
It sounds to me like Ticketron/Live Nation may be managing your hospital. Are there re-sellers of appointment times?
Yes, you gotta head over to the website ScrubHub.
Beats me. This is the Community care clinic that ALL county government employees have been using with their insurance (you don’t have to though). This clinic used to be in the very building I worked in. But that changed ~ 7 years ago. It’s still in a building that the county does most of the IS work for. It’s very close, just 1/4 mile away, incorporated to our new hospital. That’s cool.
They have been excellent in the past. Look online, see what’s open, make an appointment.
My Information Systems job is unrelated to the network stuff we do. We certainly don’t vet any of their software. Just keep the place on the net.
Not being able to make an appointment is a whole nother thing. I just ordered some new meds online (blood pressure stuff). We will see how that works out. I am not optimistic.
I still haven’t been able to schedule my endoscopy. Every time I call I just get put on hold, and after 15-20 minutes I give up. I may be retired but I have better things to do than sit there with a phone to my ear listening to crappy music.
Finally got an appointment, but not with my regular Doc. I asked the doctor that I saw to call in my Rx’s. Six days later they are not updated, and I can’t order them. So, another phone call and they said they would and would call me.
That was 6 hours ago. Nothing.
Now I will give them a break, when I was in the exam room the power to the entire building and town went out. So we did this all under emergency lighting. I loaned the doc the flashlight on my camera so she could look in my mouth.
I felt like I was an extra in a MAS*H episode. It’s crazy, it’s a fairly new building connected to the only hospital in town. Well, in the County.