I didn’t say you can’t collect on a verbal agreement, I just said it was harder.
Many Drs. will ask you to sign an agreement about their office policies on your first visit. That normally includes the stuff about billing for no shows.
This is what irritates me about the current situation.
This guy/business can ding your credit rating. They never have to PROVE anything…just report you to the credit agencies. They don’t have to take you to court and explain themselves.
Instead they just report you and wait for you to pay (like when you want to buy a house etc.)
If you want to fight it…YOU have to take THEM to court. YOU didn’t do anything but they have turned the whole court system upside down.
You don’t have this option to ding them.
Not financially, necessarily, but there is something you can do. I can think of two ways right off:
State licensing board
But you can contest the report and make them prove their claim. It’s not like the consumer doesn’t have a way to rectify improper credit reports.
It’s not that far different from my golf course. Policies are established in advance.
I make a tee time. If they blow it, it’s unlikely they’ll try to press the agreement that I am supposed to pay even if I don’t stay for a later tee time.
If I blow it, I’m supposed to be responsible to pay it, but with any sort of decent relationship they probably won’t press me to pay.
If we completely disagree, it’s likely I won’t be making another tee time and they won’t bother to collect a “debt” upon which we disagree.
I really don’t see what the issue is here.
On the chronically late front (either side): Get another doc if yours abuses your time slots. But don’t expect to get “worked in” to a schedule if you always demand she be on time. On average, my experience is that on-time appointments are a habit, on the part of both parties.
The golf course may well have an opening if you do not show. The doc will not. He will have patients all day long, if he so chooses. You can not overbook a golf course. And if you have a tee time you have to be on time or you do not play. It does not relate.
His point (If I may) is that the regulating effect of ensuring you keep your tee time or appointment isn’t necessarily found primarily in the threat of being charged for the missed time/appointment.
He can’t wait at your doorstep letting damages accrue; he’s got to try to mitigate. Maybe your neighbor is having a BBBQ??
There’s really no difference between this and refusing to honor any contract because you think the other party already makes more money than you do.
Whether the doctor can make up the missed time is legally irrelevant. My doctor has a notice in his office that plainly reads that I will be charged if I miss an appointment. I’m sure his receptionist says the same thing to somebody making an appointment for the first time. I’ve been notified and I’m making a binding verbal contract (written if I get the little card with the appointment on it). I can’t just decide to violate that contract because it’s my opinion that it doesn’t matter and hope to get away with it.
The same goes for anybody who supplies a service. They’re really selling their time. Time is valuable and it’s all they have and there are only so many hours in the day. If you contract for that time, you should pay even if you choose to not avail yourself of those services.
Work with me here; no analogy is perfect.
Both golf courses (and many other businesses) establish a policy of paying for a missed appointment. Any business (including a Physician’s Office) can be abusive toward their clients, or have clients who abuse appointments. Every well-run business protects a good relationship with a good client beyond a paper agreement.
Here is the key point. Chew on it awhile:
It is not particularly unusual to charge for a missed appointment in Medicine or many other businesses (which is the OP’s question).
One thing that I always chuckle about is how organizations believe that because something is written somewhere in their “policies” it automatically becomes binding on the entire world.
If she isn’t letting you know of a missed (edit: appointment charge) every time you call and make an appointment (or if they have your signature on something that says, in effect, that you agree to be charged said fee everytime you miss an appointment), that little placard isn’t going to do much of anything. Because, you see, I have a little placard that I carry around with me all the time that says you will pay me one billion dollars if i’m kept waiting more than 5 minutes for an appointment.
Sure, a posted notice is better than none, but it’s hardly sufficient.
And you probably have already signed an agreement to be held liable for missed or canceled appointments.
Every doctor I’ve seen in the past handful of years has presented me with a clipboard full of paperwork, and one of those pages was a financial policy acknowledgement. I’ve got one here from a physical therapist detailing how if I don’t call within 24 hours, I will be billed for the missed visit, and if I have two missed appointments, they’ll kick me to the curb and I need to find a new physical therapist.
Rumor_Watkins, right, but the next time you want to be seen by that doctor, he doesn’t have to do business with you.
And KRM, no, your insurance won’t pay. Patients are billed directly for late cancellation/ no show fees. Your insurance almost certainly has fine print explicitly stating that they won’t pay these fees.
I never indicated that that was not the case.
edit: Actually, the contract the insurer has signed with the provider may change that a bit, but this is way outside the scope of the OP.
Yes, onthe principle that they reserved time for you,l time is the only way they have to sell their skills, and you didn’t cancel until it was too late to resell the time. Sort of “You break it you bought it” or "too bad you didn;'t show up for that flight, and we don;'t care you told us a few hours ahead, you are not getting a refund on the ticket
"
They can collect the bill the same ways as any other bill and they can refuse to see you any more.
There are a few quibbles with this.
First, on the issue of liquidated damages clauses, that is, contract provisions that specify an amount of money as damages relating to breach, such clauses must accord with the actual damages that will be suffered as a result of breach. A provision that missing an appointment without so many hours notice will result in the patient being billed X dollars is essentially a liquidated damages clause. Your doctor couldn’t charge $1,000.00 for missing a routine quarter-hour follow up, for instance, because she was not made $1,000.00 worse off than if you kept the appointment.
Included in the question of damages is the possibility (and actual attempt) to cover your losses. When you suffer a breach, you can’t nurse your grudge and sit on your hands allowing damages to accrue, you have to attempt to mitigate your losses. The measure of damages is the expectation value of the contract less possible mitigation. If the doctor could see another patient, he’s not really out all that much, and so his actual damages are minimal.
I think the confusion comes from the lay misunderstanding about the culpability, so to speak, associated with breach. A suit for breach is just a suit to put yourself in the position you would have been in were the contract performed. It is very rare to penalize the breaching party. Courts are extremely reluctant to award punitives in contract cases; and many courts even take a favorable view of efficient breach.
Finally, there is some misunderstanding about how contracts are formed. Yes, this could be a verbal contract. Importantly, however, I’ve never had a doctor’s office mention their billing practices for missed appointments; one would think this would be necessary if you are going to include it as a liquidated damages provision in your oral contract. As far as the signage, I suppose that would be a question of fact as to whether the sign were conspicuous enough to notify patients of the practice. If so, you have a liquidated damages clause subject to the above analysis.
They charge for missed appointments because they can. That does not translate into a doctor having an opening. They have several patients sitting in the waiting room and just shove another one one in. Overbooking makes it so they never have a hole.
Absent your agreement that you’ll pay for the missed time, there is no presumption that you owe them for the time.
Say I call up home depot and make an appointment with their kitchen specialist so they can go over my thoughts on what kind of kitchen I would like to design. At this point, they haven’t sold me the cabinetry, all that is going on is i am sitting down and occupying one of their employee’s times. Do you really think Home Depot would have a claim against me if I didn’t show up? (ignore the fact that they’d never press the claim, I’m asking if you think they would even have one)
And “you break it you bought it” is an oddly persistent rumor that is far more complex than the maxim would suggest.
I would respectfully disagree - merely because a sign is conspicuous does not suddenly carry it into a part of the agreement.
If it is, I am so getting my “you’re 5 minutes late? one billion dollars!” Tee shirt printed up.
I forgot this part. Not only does your insurance not pay, the doctor can and will charge at a different rate. Perhaps the doctor’s agreement with your insurance company states that he will only charge them a set amount. I think that is normally how it goes. If you miss the appointment that agreement doesn’t apply and the doc may well charge the going rate for people with no insurance which is often higher.