(Really long. You can nod, smile and go read something else.)
In five decades of life in Northern California, I can’t remember a time that a medical professional - even Kaiser - was incompetent at managing their practice, to the point where it was noticeable or ever caused anyone in my family a hassle. I suppose there might have been a case or two, but I really can’t bring one to mind.
In the last four years in northeastern Connecticut, I can’t list a single professional that hasn’t had absolutely maddening inability to keep a schedule straight or deal well with clients in the waiting room or at the front desk. Every single one we’ve dealt with here has been a Marx-brothers level fuckup in this regard, except that it’s not funny.
For a generally healthy family, we seem to be at a peak of needing varied professional services, so we have allergists, orthodontists, dentists, regular doctors, specialist doctors and a therapist or two. We are lucky, I suppose, in that most of them are very good at their service or specialty, especially as most have a main practice somewhere larger and have just one or two days out here in the woods.
But OMFG, are they thorny spiral pain-in-the-ass morons about patient relations. All of them. Continuously.
We are organized about this continuing schedule of five people and multiple providers, some of whom overlap. Master wall calendar, appointment cards kept in a box, phone/online calendars for most of us. Way too complicated to try and remember or keep jotted down somewhere.
And then every provider uses the “nag you to death” reminder systems, to the point where the phone will ring at 7:00 and someone will say, “Oh, yeah, dentist appointment tomorrow.”
But… this doesn’t stop each visit from being a surprise party, where the receptionist looks at her screen in confusion and says, but but but, you’re not scheduled for today. We have you down for (random date usually about a month out, not even the same numeric date). Or they have one twin scheduled and the other one not at all, or on that random “other” date - and at least so far we’ve always gone to extra trouble to schedule them for routine things together.
Sometimes they just give us that “stupid patient” look and we just have to come back on the date they have on file… and hope it’s not another session of but but but. Sometimes, like today - WITH an appointment card that I checked when we got home AND written on the big calendar weeks ago AND after a reminder phone call last night… they find a way to squeeze us in. And tell us the appointment was for August something… which, on checking all the records, I can find no trace of.
This isn’t one practice, or one field. It’s ALL of them. It’s been continuous for four years, to the point where the Mrs, who has to drive to the city for some of her appointments, calls an hour ahead to make absolutely sure before she drives in… and gets but-but-butted about half the time.
I know what the problem is: it’s the morons in smocks behind the front glass. For all the fancy computers and scheduling programs and autoreminders and reward programs and squee and contests and shit, none of them can figure out that they can’t just move appointments around without letting anyone know. I’ve watched them do it. “Oh, Timmy absolutely has to be seen before the 20th? Hmm…” (click, drag, type, click some more, drag, type) “Okay, there we go. 10 am on the 19th!” …and three or four people are in for a but-but-butting.
These are not low-end providers. They have walls full of “Best Dentist” magazine covers, and that absolutely professional corporate slickness in every detail. Again, most are very competent or better at the actual service, once you get there. But one more fucking time I go to an appointment that is all but set in concrete from my perspective to get that heavily made up sad-face telling me it’s actually 2 weeks out on a day I never would have scheduled anything, and… fuuuuuucccckkkkk.
And then there’s the ones who shouldn’t be scheduling anyone, like the allergist who was always yelling at his staff about something, and at least once threw such a towering, raging fit that people were bundling up their kids and leaving. My size (pretty big) and stomping, roaring, slamming doors, storming out to his car, slamming back in, throwing a heavy catalog case at his staff, dumping it on the floor, leaving the mess… in context, one of the most terrifying moments in my adult life. I really wondered if he was going to go physical on someone, anyone, maybe me.
That office is kind of my poster child for this whole bitchfest. Not only was it one of six or seven offices in the service chain, but it was a dirty, fithly, cramped office at the end of the last long hall on the top floor of an aging building, very hard to get to for each regular visit (weekly allergy shots). Interior dec from about 1983. (That might seem irrelevant, but this was a high-profit, highly-patronized arm of the dominant allergy providers in the area. No reason at all not to have better facilities.)
I figure that it was the asshole of the chain, where they stuck their worst doctor and the staff they couldn’t fire. Oh, the staff… the ones he was yelling at. Five fat, stupid cows, and I am being descriptive, not insulting. 3-400 pounds each. Dumb as fucking rocks - ask them a question, like, “Is there a pen?” and get several seconds of bovine stare, followed by the slowest possible response of handing over a pen or pointing to the flowie-pen container. And of that incredibly nasty, you WILL kiss my fat ass tenderly stripe when it came to dealing with them.
F’rex, on the first visit we played what turned out to be the universal came of entering and standing in front of the glass window for several minutes while the cow slowly shuffled papers, typed a few things, addressed comments to her herd-mates, and finally - not after any obvious completion of a task or other obligation, opens the slider and says, “Yes?” I give a name. She slowly looks it up on her screen. “Okay.” Closes sliding window.
Every single person who comes in has to go through this process, and if you know how allergy clinics work, it’s mostly people coming in weekly for a shot-and-wait session. Routine. Damn near a subway turnstile. Same people week after week, year after year. But the cow has to get hers.
So on that first visit, we check in as above, and sit down in direct sight of her bovine gaze. After a half hour, I repeat the process, give the name and say, “We’ve been here since our appointment time…” Slow cow efforts. “We’re a little busy today.” Close sliding window. (Note: they were no busier then than I ever saw them in the next several months.)
An hour. I ask again, pointing out that we’re just there for shots. “Oh.” Long pause. Pull up nasty attitude. “Did you sign in on the door?” No, we had not signed in on the door to the shot clinic. Too long story not much shorter, we signed in, got the shots, waited the fainting period, and left, almost two hours after walking in.
Okay, so next visits my daughter goes over and signs in first thing while I wait out the cow at the front window. Since she never does anything but bestow her acknowledgement of my presence, I eventually stop doing this, and instead walk in and sit right where she can see me. Eventually, there’s a consequence for not kissing the cow’s ass: I see them get to my daughter’s name on the list. I hear the back room discussion of her. The front cow says something to all of them. The next name on the list is called. Fifteen minutes later, the cow calls me to the window, and chews me out for “not checking in.” She doesn’t seem to know or care that everyone in the small office could hear the discussion and it was easy to see that the wait had been a flat-out fuck-me for not genuflecting to the cow goddess.
Anyway, I don’t remember exactly what straw broke the camels’ back here, but we stopped going and I found another allergist who was almost as crazy but changed my daughter’s regimen to a more effective one and hasn’t, so far, thrown a towering temper tantrum. But we have had two scheduling fuckups out of three over the last year.
I really don’t know what the deal is. There’s a virus among professionals here that promotes the worst kind of staff incompetence and patient disregard. And I haven’t even gone into the dentist who can’t walk you down the hall without trying to upsell something… a routine cleaning is a 40-minute infomercial, every time.
And the orthodontist is the one with the absolutely horrible, ugly, inappropriate, graphic-arts Razzie-winning logo, which has spread to the back of work smocks… in sequins.
It’s gotten so I actually sigh with relief when I go to an appointment, get greeted with a smile, and am told the doctor will be right with me. So I can sit and listen to the giant flatscreen try to entertain or upsell me.
Did I mention the therapist so useless she should be home baking cookies?
