Exactly what the title says. Parking lot to parking lot, what seems reasonable for you? Feel free to break it down by new vs. established patient, primary care vs. specialist, long-scheduled appointment vs. urgent care, having tests done, how busy the place is, whatever you feel would affect your willingness to stick around.
I’m working for a human doctor now, and we’re trying to address some issues with our patient through times. Specifically, we’re trying to convince our boss that there is indeed an issue with our patient through times. He sees nothing wrong and thinks we’re all hypersensitive when we tell him patients get pissed at having to be there so long, and that if we were patients we’d certainly be pissed about such a thing. I’d like a little independent data to refer to when we discuss this issue yet again.
For the curious, our current through times are an hour to an hour and a half for a follow-up or post op patient, and upwards of three hours for an uncomplicated new patient who doesn’t require special testing. This doesn’t count time at the front desk, just from the time we call someone back to the time they walk out the door. And for a point of reference, we’re only seeing 5-10 patients a day right now.
I thought your followup sounded OK until you said that was from when they were called back, not waiting to get into a room! With no testing and for a general practicioner, I’d say a half hour for a follow-up, and an hour for a new patient.
That’s insane. I’ve fired doctors for wait times half that long. There is absolutely no reason that an office shouldn’t be able to manage their schedule better than that.
Three hours? Are you at least feeding people when they have to wait so long? Unless you’re the best specialist in the country, that’s beyond excessive.
Holy Og, I get antsy when the wait’s more than fifteen minutes. You know, there are management companies that will come in and straighten out the business side of a doctor’s office, and that includes appointment bookings and office flow.
My wife’s doctor sees 6-10 patients an hour and our normal time is an hour to an hour and a quarter from walk in the waiting room to walk out. That includes making the next appointment, renewing scripts, etc.
Yeah, but they can’t make the doctor bring his ass to work on time and stop fiddle farting around in his office while patients are waiting.
It’s an ophthalmology office, and the standard new patient workup is this: We pick them up from the waiting room, check an autorefraction and pressure (the machine with the little barn inside and the air puff thing, respectively), take wide-view and close-up retinal photos, and bring them to an exam room. In the room, we review why they’re here, take a full medical history, check their vision/pupils/eye motility/glare, and test them for a new glasses prescription. Depending on how organized and aware the patient is and how well they can understand instructions for the tests you’re trying to do, all this can take somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour. Then they’re ready for the doctor.
At this point, he’s supposed to talk to them a few minutes, then do an anterior segment exam (from the lids to the lens.) Then we put in dilating drops and do any client education that’s needed for issues found so far. Once the eyes have dilated, he looks at the lens and retina, then discusses any issues he’s found, makes recommendations, and has us set up the next appointment. This should take somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 minutes. Total time should be in the range of an hour to an hour and a half.
What actually happens is that the patient waits somewhere between 10 minutes and an hour before he comes in (depending on whether he’s even in the building yet), then he spends 10 minutes disputing with them about their medical history and how he doesn’t believe most of their diagnoses and how their primary care doc never refers patients to us and how the optometrist they were seeing before never refers to us either. Then he does the anterior seg exam, gives us detailed instructions about how to put in the dilating drops as though we’d never done it before, and explains to us exactly what handouts to print out for the bog-standard dry eye issue the patient is having. Once we tell him the patient is dilated, he fiddles around in his office another 10 minutes, then does the dilated exam. Then he talks about tests/procedures the patient may need in the future and how his equipment is the very, very best in the whole world and starts spouting model numbers and shit. Then he decides that he doesn’t think the glare testing is accurate and makes you retest the patient. Then he goes off on a lecture about how when the patient has their new glasses made they really shouldn’t get anything but standard lined bifocals.
Back when I was seeing an ophthalmologist, I was lucky that she was in the same office with my referring optometrist. But my yearly checkups that encompassed the pre-exam you mentioned, plus a pressure test with numbing drops and the fancy tonometry machine (no more puffs of air for me, thank og for that!), plus a visual fields test in a tiny room with my head inside a giant egg, dilation, pictures and finally a new glasses prescription, probably an hour and a half tops.
When I was taking eye pressure medication and following up with the ophthalmologist for the 6-month follow-up, I was in and out in 45 minutes.
For my PCP I get there 15 minutes prior to the appointed time. I am generally into the exam room and having my vitals taken, and my scrip/OTC meds list double checked and such for about 10 minutes though I seem to get about 5 minutes of wait time before my doc shows up, then my doc is in to pass time with me, he is scheduled for 15 minutes or 30 minutes depending on what is going on. After that, as long as someone isn’t hogging the receptionist it is about 5 minutes to make another appointment and/or pick up my printed out scrips. Sometimes I get samples of meds if we are tweaking some med or another, though I tell them not to give me samples of my regular stuff and to save them for people without insurance.
My specialty docs generally get me in within 30 minutes of the original appointment time - again about 10 minutes or so to do the vitals and update, about a 5 m inute wait for the doc, and anywhere from 30 to an hour or more depending on why I am in. Eyes take a fair amount of time for all the little tests and eyedrops and suchlike. My neurologist varied from basic about 30 minutes to the parkinsons research team doing imaging and such soaking up all day, my podiatrist is about half an hour, my orthopod varies depending on what I am in for.
My longest doc wait? Went in for surgery at 10 and didn’t see the doc I was there for, I got admitted instead and met a cardiologist instead of having an hysterectomy I finally got with my oncology/gyn a couple months later after working to get stabilized.
Ironically, the only time I’ve ever had a three hour wait in a medical situation is in an emergency room. And I can understand that. They can’t preschedule the people they see and they have to take people in order of how serious their condition is rather than first come first serve.
But three hours for a regular appointment? That’s way past normal.
I think that you misstated that last sentence a bit. HE’S all just fucking nuts. Or possibly on drugs.
The time that I’m willing to wait depends on the sort of doc that I need to see, and how full the waiting room is, and whether I can see that someone needs to be worked in as an emergency. If I’m there to get my routine eye examine, and someone needs to have his eyeball put back into its socket, I’m willing to wait or reschedule as needed. It also depends on whether or not I’ve been to this doc before. If the doctor does shit like argue about my medical history and is generally confrontational and unpleasant to work with, I’m not likely to come back. In fact, I have to see a foot doctor every two or three months, and there’s one within one or two miles of my house, but I go to one that’s about eight miles away. I’ve been to the closer podiatrist a couple of times, and each time he’s barked at me and kept me waiting. In fact, this guy could almost be your doctor’s twin, in his procedures. His waiting room is always either empty or only has one other patient in it. Apparently I’m not the only patient that he has problems with. He’s just a very unpleasant person, and I’ve heard him yelling at his office staff more than once. And if I can hear it, I wonder what he says when I can’t hear it.
On the other hand, I’ve waited for a couple of hours for a doctor (GP) who I liked, because when I needed extra time, he was willing to spend it. So I figured that he was spending time with a patient who needed it, unexpectedly.
You do have your resume updated and circulating, right? I can’t imagine that this guy is very pleasant to work with. And I can’t imagine that he’s gonna stay open.
My normal BP is below 120/60 but after waiting in my doctor’s office one day for over 30 minutes followed by a 15 minute wait in the exam room, when he checked it it was close to 160/90. I concluded that seeing this doctor was bad for my health.
OK, ophthalmology is different due to stuff like doing a refraction, dilation time being needed to be taken into account, etc. - I also work in ophthalmology, so I’d factor in more time due to it being a specialty that usually needs testing. Getting sent for imaging will really add onto that time unless it’s just an OCT.
Your doctor sounds like a control freak, IMO. One of the doctors I works with takes forever to get through his patients but that’s partially because he can get derailed on talking about other things, massaging egos of VIPs, taking phone calls from outside doctors/administrative-related issues and getting really wrapped up in those, etc., but he’s got a not-undeserved reputation for being stellar and so a lot of people just put up with waiting for hours like that. The others range from blazing fast to average in speed - and they’re fabulous doctors.
I think he makes you guys look (wrongly) incompetent in a patient’s eyes when he gives you instructions on stupidly easy things, like eye dilation, and that is a bad message to send. (A patient could dilate his own eyes if you hand him the bottles!) The trouble is, I’m not sure how you could fix him. He’s the boss, he obviously thinks he’s the shit, and he doesn’t apparently trust you guys to know enough to be able to dilate someone’s eyes without explicit instructions. Sorry!
(Oh yeah, and I’m a big fan of Goldmann applanation tonometry or a Tonopen, over the old puff-of-air. Patients seem to prefer those, too.)
The only physician that I know that takes longer than what you described is a pain doc who is a client of mine. He will have patients scheduled at 8 am and stroll in around 11:30. I assume they don’t leave because most of them are out of work on workers comp or disability, just don’t have jobs period, and/or finding a pain doc willing to take new patients is insanely hard. But your ophthalmology situation? That specialty is a dime a dozen, considering most people only make appointments once a year. It should take no time at all to get a patient brought back and prepped, which it sounds like is the case. It’s your doc that’s crazy.
I don’t understand all the variables in the OP. I make an appointment with a doctor - we have agreed to meet at a certain place and time. At one half hour I start bugging the staff. At one hour sharp I leave and find another doctor unless I’m bleeding seriously, which has happened. I know it’s counterproductive but when you are paying so much for a service you shouldn’t have to grovel too.
I subtract from the time I’m willing to wait if I see a pharm rep stroll in ahead of me. Grrrr. My blood pressure is sky high by the time his magesty allows me into his presence.
The OP is talking about how long a visit takes after they bring you into a room, not the time spent waiting before you’re seen.
Where I work, pharma reps may get to go in back, but techs will be running interference while trying to shake down the rep for samples that we can give to poor patients (the only stuff we get these days are vitamins and artificial tear drops, blah) and then get them out the door.
OK. Although she says “Parking lot to parking lot”, which I also don’t get.
Once I’m in the room, sometimes stripped down, I’m not waiting more than 30 minutes before I wander out into the hall to see if I’ve been forgotten. I always, always, always take a book when I have to see a doctor but even then I’m not going to sit in my underpants on that crinkly paper for but so long. I know there can be long pauses while tests are done or they wait for some equipment to become available. The important thing to me is that someone bother to explain the situation and the explanation should sound at least a little plausible. “The doctor is running a little late” is a given.
Good point, I missed that. It seemed like her primary issue was the doctor fucking around even while the patient was in the room and had part of the exam complete, rather than the more usual “overbooking doctor makes you wait for an hour then spends 5 minutes with you” complaints that people have, so I was focusing on that.
I finally got with my oncology/gyn a couple months later after working to get stabilized.