True story: Before I actually knew that I have asthma, I was having an asthma attack and could not really breathe. I called my regular doctor and asked if they could see me. The phone answerer set me up for a 10:30 a.m. appointment, to which I showed up on time. At 12:00 – still unable to breathe and getting worse – I walked up to the receptionist’s desk and asked if I’d been forgotten, reminded them that I was having TROUBLE BREATHING and really, really, really needed to see the doctor. Blank stares. At 1:00 p.m., I couldn’t really get up from my seat, so I CALLED the reception desk (across the room) from where I was sitting and asked the same questions. They hung up on me. A few minutes later, I was called back. I probably should have left, but I was afraid to drive without being treated. It probably would have been a shorter wait in the ER, and nobody suggested to me that I should go there instead, although I probably should have.
So for me, how long I’m willing to wait totally depends on: A) past experience with that doctor, B) what else I have to do that day and how much time I need to get it done, C) how emergent the problem is, i.e., can it wait? Can I get treatment elsewhere? Is this just a checkup/followup? But, in general, 15-20 minutes is about the limit of my patience before I start bitching and ask to reschedule.
This is generally my outlook on it, also. The only time recently I’ve been willing to wait more than two weeks for an appointment is my most recent appointment with my endocrinologist - and that’s only because a) I had to cancel on her for the last appointment (new job, insurance gap) b) when I called to reschedule after the new insurance picked back up again, her receptionist explained the reason for the delay (she’s on vacation for two of the five weeks I had to wait for an appointment and was understandably crammed up for the weeks immediately before and after), and c) the only time I had to wait longer than 5 minutes between the nurse taking initial readings (BP, blood sugar, weight, etc.) and the doctor walking into the treatment room someone had had a heart attack in the waiting room.
I was always willing to give my obstetrician wide latitude when I was in my breeding years. Babies are notoriously averse to scheduling and even the most diligent doctor, who schedules a backup doctor, can be called away for an obstetric emergency which throws the entire scheduling day off.
If my appointment is with a dermatologist, I have no such tolerance.
I’m not frightening or impossible to deal with. A simple explanation by the office staff that there has been an emergency or other issue causing a delay is understandable and not enough to make me storm off. Unless, of course, it’s an habitual state of affairs with that person.
I’ve informally adopted the good old college rule - if the full professor is 20 mins late, you can leave the class without penalty. If I’m kept waiting for more than 20 mins without any explanation or on repeated occasions, I rethink my service providers.
I’m much less tolerant of people wasting my time than I used to be. These days if I’m not called back to an examination room by 30 minutes after my appointment time, I will reschedule and tell them why. I also hate when they make me wait a very long time in the exam room, but haven’t yet walked out of that situation. I need to watch the clock and be more assertive there, too.
Some years ago when I was very patient I had an appt with a reumatologist and showed up 15 before my appt time, which was 10am. People kept showing up, signing in and sitting down, with almost nobody being called back. At 10:45, someone new walked in and instead of quietly signing in, they told the receptionist “I’m Joe Smith with a 10:45 appt with Dr. Jones”. Someone near him said “hey, my appt is at 10:45 with Dr. Jones!”, and then a third person said the same thing and we were all getting pretty cranky at this news. They were triple-booking the doctor.
Even further back, I had to see a very special specialist (orthopedic surgeon who only works on feet and ankles!). I had a 2.5 hour wait in the waiting room followed by a 2 hour wait in the exam room. The doctor, when he finally showed his face, saw me for about 10 minutes. :mad:
Well, my last GP was on his last legs for a number of reasons, but when I went in for an 8:45am (or something like that) appointment when his office didn’t open until 8:30, and he didn’t stroll into the room until almost an hour later, that was the last straw.
I’m your second damned appointment of the day and you’re an hour late. :smack:
Fired a previous Chiropractor for more or less the same thing. Made appointments over my lunch hour because it was only 4-5 miles from where I worked. Spent an hour and a half waiting for him. Walked out still not seen, told the admin that I would never come back because of that.
I don’t even have patience for hairdressers anymore. You reminded me of when my haircutting appointment was seriously overdue. I had an appointment for 2. I got there at 1:50. At 2:30 she FINALLY finished with the old lady that was getting her hair cut, and then I found out there was still a man ahead of me. No way lady. I left.
Oh, I forgot the story of the time the doctor forgot he had a patient waiting (me) and went to lunch. Yeah, THAT was special. The nurses were apologetic and took me back to see a different doctor, but I never went back to that place.
As a patient/parent of patient I have waited an hour but would not do it if that was how things regularly run.
As a provider I have to say that if any of you actually bail if you have to wait ten minutes or more then you must be bailing out on physicians a whole heap of a lot. Scheduling such that you consistently run nearly exactly on time is virtually impossible unless you are not at all busy and schedule with a hole in the schedule between each patient.
I will turn the question around -
How late to a scheduled appointment should you be allowed to be and still be seen? What if the reason was a traffic accident or something else that really could not be helped? But the reason for the visit was still important and you took off work for it?
How rigid should a doctor be about cutting off a visit if you bring up another issue or two than what you you originally identified as the reason for the visit when made the appointment, or even if you are not quite getting what the doctor is saying and have some additional questions to clarify?
We really try very hard to run on time and usually do and we have staff go in to let people know if we running more than 15 minutes behind and to keep them updated. When we run behind we are apologetic. But sometimes a patient early in the schedule comes in 15 minutes late and we try to oblige. And sometimes what was expected to be straightforward turns into a very complex situation. Usually both the same morning and at the same time as the ED is calling to report on a patient there just as you are trying to catch up.
Expecting patients to routinely tolerate long waits is arrogant and unrealistic; cutting providers no slack at all is as well.
I expect that as a mater of routine I as a patient should be seen in a range from on time to within 20 minutes depending on the day and would tolerate an exceptional day of much longer but not too many of them. Cutting that much slack is realistic; cutting much more is enabling bad behavior.
90% of the time I’m at the Doc it’s because I’m sick enough to not be at work and need a medical certificate. In that case I’ll wait as long as I need to.
The current Doc I use is great, I doubt he’s ever been more than 10 minutes late in the time I’ve been seeing him.
My previous doctor was always running late - 45 minutes to an hour wasn’t unusual. He was a good doctor but I switched after he sent me home rather than hospital when my appendix malfunctioned, leading to an ambulance ride later that afternoon (and he moved his office 1/2 way across town).
Anyone else - I always try to arrive 5 or 10 minutes early for an appointment, if I’m running late I will call, explain and apologise - if I’m sitting in their waiting room I expect at least a ‘sorry, were running a bit late’ and maybe even an estimate of when they will be available - 10 minutes -fine. I’ll wait and read, 20 minutes or more and I’ll nip out for a coffee and come back a bit later.
Scheduling is tough in the real world. So many variables effect how much time something takes. No one likes to make patients wait. And no physician I know double books except for extreme “this patient has to be seen today” issues. And then usually they are worked in to the physician’s “lunch break.”
In my experience, if you find the better doctors and they are a specialist, it can take longer to wait for them. In those situations, being sick and/or upset about a condition I’m going to wait until they can see me. For a number of reasons, but the time investment isn’t in the waiting. It’s in having to add them to my schedule and the travel to get there. So I’m not going to leave if I am waiting 30 minutes, when they could see me in another 10 minutes or so. Just doing the numbers, that’s a complete waste of time to go to an appointment and leave before you accomplish your task.
I place health concerns as a top priority. If I was waiting 10 minutes while the dry-cleaner can’t find my clothes I dropped off, I would change dry-cleaners. A great doctor, no, I wait. But the other thing I do so I’m not rushed is that I schedule doctor appointments at the end of the day so I don’t have to get back to work.
I don’t mind if the doctor is late because he had to take extra time. But I do object to the front-of-office staff lying about it.
If I go in at 12:50 and ask when the doctor will be seeing me for my 1pm appointment, then I damn well want to know if he is running an hour late already.
Physicians and veterinarians can have emergencies. That’s understood. True, but less so, for accountants and lawyers. Also true, but less frequent, for eye doctors, hairdressers, mechanics, etc.
I will try to be patient at an appointment, but I expect to be informed. When I show up on time for an appointment, and the provider is running late, let me know there will be a wait, and why. And then update me every 15 minutes or so. And, yes, adding an apology goes a long way. Moving me to the exam room and having me wait another 20 minutes is not a solution. I have gotten up and opened the exam room door and asked if I’ve been forgotten.
I can tolerate the occasional delay, but if it is habitual, I’ll change doctors. I can understand if it happens now and then, but if it is the norm, then clearly the business places no importance on my time and schedule.
My wife had surgery by a thoughtless prick. His office is literally less than one-half mile from our house. For her first appointment, she waited for nearly two hours. The next time, she waited for over an hour. The third time, she called from home and asked how late appointments were running, and was told quite a bit. She explained that she lives less than two minutes from the office, and asked to be called with a ten-minute warning. They said they couldn’t do that. She went ahead with that surgery, but we’ve insisted on other surgeons for later procedures. We have found out that the surgeon has surgeries in the nearby hospital, but starts scheduling appointments in his office earlier than he ever gets back after surgeries. He simply doesn’t care that everyone has to wait in his office for him.
I can flatly say I am almost never late for my appointments. Maybe half a dozen times in my entire life. I hate being late; it stresses me out to no end. So I expect the same kind of respect from my doctors:
Be consistent. Respect appointment times as much as possible. I am not going to be furious if you are 10-15 minutes past the time. I won’t even be furious if you are 30-40 minutes past, if it’s rare. If it’s every time, you don’t know how to manage your time.
It depends on the type of doctor, too. When I went to the fertility clinic to get my Essure treatment, I was way more understanding than, say, at the dentist. That is an emotional place and I get that the doctor can’t rush through every single appointment. At my gyno? I pretty much expect you to be on time. Those are routine exams you are doing.
Let the staff know you are late, so they can let the patients know, and give the patients a chance to reschedule if they are crazy late.
Don’t take walkins over appointments!
In exchange, I promise to:
Always be on time.
Have my questions consistent and clear, written down if I have to.
Explain to the receptionist what my problem is when I make the appointment, so she can book the time accordingly.
There are various was to schedule appointments, including:
[ul]
[li]Steady Stream[/li][li]Fixed/Pure Wave[/li][li]Modified Wave[/li][/ul]
With steady stream, individual gets her or his own specific appointment time, and waits if the schedule falls behind. The disadvantage to the business is dead time if an individual fails to attend. Unfortunately, businesses often mitigate this disadvantage by not allotting enough time per individual, thereby causing backups. Essentially, individuals are paying with their time for the business’ down time.
With fixed/pure wave, there is double or triple booking at the start of each time period but also a gap at the end of each hour, so all but the first individual to arrive have to wait, but hopefully not into the next time period’s block. The advantage to the business is that there is always another individual available when there is a no-show. Essentially, individuals are paying with their time for the business’ down time.
Modified wave is similar to fixed/pure wave, only more care is taken to sort out which individuals can be processed faster and which individuals will take more time, so of the double or triple booked individuals who have arrived and are waiting, the quickest matter will be dealt with first. The advantage to the business is that there is always another individual available when there is a no-show. Essentially, individuals are paying with their time for the business’ down time, with the individual with the longest matter bearing the brunt such that fewer individual wait as long, but those who do wait wait longer.
Interesting. I didn’t realize there was a science to booking appointments, although I suppose I should have. That certainly explains a lot that has always puzzled me about why services providers have seemed (in my eyes) so disorganized and unable to handle their traffic flow.
When it comes to scheduling, conceptually, it’s along the lines of industrial just-in-time-delivery of supplies, in which the individual is supply/material/component being delivered to the business, as opposed to just being the consumer purchasing the service or end product from the business.
Clearly however not everyone is you. And notably you did not answer the question.
For those people who are not you, who do not account for the possibility of getting stuck behind a train, or whatever … how late should we allow?
For those who are not you, those who gave the receptionist a clear idea what the appointment was for but then had multiple other issues that came up once in the room … should we cut them off and tell them to schedule another visit to address those issues?
If we cut them slack we do so at your expense. If we don’t we anger quite a few other people who are not as organized and stressed about being late as you are, and who often people who are usually on time or keep to the subject but just are not this time.
End of day, I agree with you: 10 to 15 minutes is reasonable and the rare exception of much longer; much longer as a norm should not be tolerated.
I very much dislike the “wave” approach, except maybe two patients with anticipated straightforward problems given the same time and seeing the one who gets there first first.