I’d never come back and I’d never tell you why. I’d just secretly think your doctor was a total jerk. I did that once, long ago, when a doctor made me wait 90 minutes…he was letting senior citizens without an appointment go before me. I was so pissed I never went back to him and to do this day if anyone asks me about him I tell my experiences…bad reputation.
That’s unacceptable. I’ve been going to ophthalmologists for 30 years. I’ve never had to wait more than 10 minutes in the waiting room (usually filling out paperwork). I require a bunch of “extra” tests because I have borderline ocular hypertension. So when I went to my new ophthalmologist yesterday, I fell into the category of “complicated new patient.” My doc was great, explained a lot of things to me, and yet I was still done in 75 minutes.
Unfortunately, based on what you’ve said, I don’t think you’ll get him to change. Has he been in practice a long time?
I took my daughter to see the eye doctor recently. I had an appointment at 5:30, got there at 5:25, did some paperwork. At 6:25 I was impatiently waiting the last five minutes before I went to figure out if we had been forgotten, when they called her back.
I am not going back to this eye doctor. Not for her glasses, not for mine. They have lost one patient, and missed a chance to get my business. I put up with a lot of minor crap from my pain doctor, because the wait times are super short. I hate cortisone shots, but at least they are over soon.
Wait times are important.
I read a sign in a Dr.'s waiting room once lecturing the patients to be on time for an apt. It closed by saying “time is money”. I think they forget we pay their salary!
I have a couple of doctors with insane wait times (1-1.5 hours after the scheduled appointment). But in this day and age, I’m able to work anywhere I darned well want to, so I head to the office, get checked in, fire up the laptop, ask a receptionist nicely if they have any coffee, and work for an hour or so. The waiting rooms are generally much quieter than work and easier to focus in. And if I don’t want to work I can Facebook or shop Ebay for things I shouldn’t be spending money on.
Those without this benefit…are out of luck, sadly.
I agree completely.
I don’t have health insurance, so as a cash customer, I am a lot less forgiving of having to sit around. I just get angrier and angrier as I sit there, stewing and thinking to myself, “I am paying HOW MUCH to sit here and get shitty service?!” And as a cash customer, I’ll just get up and go somewhere else with better wait service because I can.
Now, I realize that cash customers aren’t exactly a doctor’s bread and butter, but there it is. That’s my rationale.
What would be acceptable? I need to be back in a room within five minutes of my appointment time. The doctor should be in there within 5 minutes of that-- particularly if the exam room is one of the completely empty ones, without a single comfy place to sit or magazine or tv or cell phone reception (ie: most of 'em). If I’m rolling in because I’ve got something simple that doesn’t require testing, I expect to be in and out in total less than 30 minutes. My college health center was AMAZING about this-- you could walk in, get taken back by a nurse, examined by a doctor, and out the door with a prescription in 15 minutes. If a government funded college health center with one doctor servicing thousands of students can be that efficient, certainly a for-pay doctor’s office can be, too.
There’s a medical center in Fort Worth, that consists of at least four buildings and several parking lots. The parking lots and buildings aren’t marked with easily visible names or numbers or letters. Even if you qualify for handicapped parking, or use the valet parking, you might have to spend 15-30 minutes in trying to find your doctor’s BUILDING, and then finding his office inside that building. You might have to take an elevator in Building A, then cross the skywalk to Building C. The entrances/exits to the buildings are hard to locate, as well.
I won’t go to any doctor, no matter how much I like him, if his office is in this complex.
On the one hand, I’d never wait more than a half hour in either the waiting room or the exam room w/o telling the front desk I can either reschedule or find another doctor. If they tell me they’re behind when I check in, then I’ll reconsider another 15 minutes wait.
On the other hand, I’d lay dollars to doughnuts the OP could present ironclad proof the through times are far too long and this doctor won’t believe it until he has no patients. His excuses are ready and plentiful, he’s not going to improve.
You know, I had LASIK in less time than the average patient for your doctor gets their glasses. I think that’s all that needs to be said.
I started thinking about my appointments after this thread.
Eye doctor (routine eye exam) I am in and out the door in about twenty-five - thirty minutes. He’s very fast and he doesn’t overbook.
Gyno - about an hour from in the door to exit. This includes being seen by the nurse first and doing medical history, then the one who actually does the Pap smear, then a post exam talk to see if I have any concerns.
Opthalmologist - I had to go here due to an infection. The longest they took was an hour and a forty minutes from start to finish; there were a lot of people. The shortest was one hour fifteen. That includes: the prelim eye test, seeing the doctor, dilating, seeing the doctor again.
Allergist: Back to the 25 minute mark, if not less.
Regular docotr 30-40 minutes.
Your wait time is insane. Like yellowjacketcoder, I had a fairly important procedure - Essure - done in less time than your doctor. And they knocked me out for that! (twilight sleep type of thing)
I used to work for a neurologist who didn’t leave her home until the first patient showed up in the office, no matter what the schedule looked like. I’d get there, get everything set up, the first patient would arrive and I’d page the doctor. She’d show up a half hour later, already running late. She always spent plenty of time with each patient, putting her even further behind. I would usually leave at least one or two empty slots in her schedule for catchup time, if I could. She’d generally snarf lunch standing up, go back to work to try to catch up, but some patients waited in the waiting room for a couple hours.
Although some would complain, most were far more patient than I’d ever be. And I did mention to those that complained that just as she never rusher their visits, she never rushed anyone else, either. But if she would’ve just checked the schedule and shown up when the first patient was scheduled, life would’ve been much easier for all of us.
StG
I start getting antsy at 30 minutes, pissy at 1 hour and then go up to the front desk and ask if it’s my turn next at 1.5 hours if it’s a general practitioner. If it’s a specialist, I’ll probably go and nag the front desk around the 30 minute mark.
However, I am a non-confrontational Canadian.
I understand that things happen to gum up the process. I’ve been that patient who took too long with the doctor and so I like to give the benefit of the doubt. But I’ve also been escorted into a waiting room after waiting for almost 2 hours, given another doctor to see, and noticed that the doctor schedule was up on the computer monitor and the doctor I was supposed to see had actually booked the day off. :rolleyes:
Partly I’m interested in how long people think is reasonable for lobby+exam time, partly I wanted to be able to say “This is what people think is okay counting waiting for a room, not just the actual visit.” And tbh, the two numbers are essentially the same for us. We generally have more staff than patients in the office, so people tend to not even make it to the magazine rack before they get called back. Someday, however, we might actually get busy enough that lobby wait times become something we need to track and keep an eye on.
And yeah, I know that all the facts and figures in the world won’t make my boss get his act together. That doesn’t mean a girl can’t dream.
Also, I partly just needed to blow off steam and have something to point at and say “See? See?! I knew I was right!” Yesterday was…quite bad. Our first patient was scheduled at 11 (he won’t show up earlier than that, so we’ve learned not to schedule anyone earlier than that), he didn’t show up till after 12 when 4 people were waiting on him, and the last patient left at 5:20. We had 10 patients, 4 news and 6 rechecks/post-ops. None of his notes were written or charts signed at that point.
How the hell does he manage to pay you guys, much less the rent/utilities/etc? Does he have a business manager who’ll talk some sense into him?
The clinic is owned by a local hospital system, and he has a 3-year staffing contract with the hospital, with the understanding that he’ll buy the clinic at the end of the three years. There is, of course, no way in any circle of Hell that he’ll be able to build the practice enough in another 2 years to have anything anybody would be willing to buy.
Here is my experience, coincidentally with an ophthalmologist. He is, by all accounts, the local expert in eye surgery. He is chief of eye surgery in a well-regarded hospital. I was referred to him after complications from a cataract operation by another surgeon in his group. The first time I saw him, his appointment secretary told me to expect to wait three hours. I asked what if I just came three hours later. “Then he won’t see ayou”, was her reply. So I came at the appointment time. A technician saw me pretty quickly, did a vision test, a pressure test, and put in dilating drops. Then I waited, and waited,… and, within three hours of the appointment I got in to see the great man himself. He took a lot of time to explain what he was going to do and mentioned in passing that there was a 5% chance of a detached retina later. The operation was uneventful (I arrived at 7:30, spent an hour getting examined and prepped (three or four drops, repeated three more times) and then waited a while in a gurney but the took me in maybe at ten and I was out by 11. The next day, everyone who was operated on the previous day got the same 8AM appointment. But it was routine and, after the eye test and pressure test, he examined me briefly and I was out by 9,
Fast forward a year. Now I had a detached retina. Seven days later I was under the knife. It was in the week after New Year’s (Jan. 4 to be exact) and the hospital was operating at half speed since it was considered a vacation week. I reported at 8AM to the recovery room since the outpatient clinic was formally closed. I waited much longer and didn’t go in to the operating room till nearly noon. The operation itself took 2 1/2 hours. The next day, a Saturday, the hospital was really nearly shut down (it is a Jewish hospital to boot) and there had not been very much surgery the previous day, so I was in and out in no time. A month later, the retina is still torn. Surgery scheduled in six days. Again, the next day examination was short and I was out quickly. This time, I realized that those are all dealt with in the order they come in and I arrived about 7:45 for my 8 O’clock appointment. Then I was given an appointment five weeks later at 3:50 in the afternoon. I thought I might be able to short circuit the waiting time by getting there at 3. Ha ha! It turned out that no matter when I had gotten there I was going to be the last patient he saw because I was getting some sort of laser treatment. My wife and I had concert tickets for 8 and we realized there was very little chance we would make it. Indeed, by the time he got to me, he had to find a janitor to unlock the laser treatment room and around 8. But there worst thing was the elderly woman in the convertible walker who had a 12:30 appointment and didn’t get seen till about 6:30. This is inhuman, not to mention inhumane.
Isn’t the whole point of the system to shield the doctor from seeing people until he is ready and to make sure he never, ever has to wait? So maybe he actually doesn’t see all the people sitting around. I know when I wait for long periods I don’t ever see the doctor walking by. He takes some other route that that allows him to magically appear at the exam room door, as if fresh from saving another life.
If there was some way to allow him to see the crowd building up, maybe he would get the message? Or maybe it would stoke his ego, I don’t know. This is why I think it is important for patients to express their displeasure, IF they can find the man in the first place.
I went to an opthamologist as a new patient and in was in and out in about an hour, from sign-in to checkout. I would never go back to anyplace that kept me there 2 hours or more for a routine appointment. But…
…anonymous feedback from an Internet message board will do absolutely nothing to convince your boss of anything, especially since he’s predisposed to disregard anyone else’s opinions. And it’s not even his patients opinions. It’s not data. The only thing that will make him think is losing patients (not in the dramatic sense). If patients get so pissed, why do they come back? If his schedule continues to stay full he won’t care.
I worked for a company with poor morale but the boss just said, “If morale is so bad, why isn’t anybody quitting?”