My GYN is a specialist in urology. I have the opposite problem as you. He is so busy, he is dropping the OB part of his practice. 
At his office, I don’t mind the wait at all. When ever I have been feeling absolutely terrible, they have made room for me on thier schedule to be seen that day.
As for other places, I hate havng to reschedule. It was a nightmare when I worked. That meant I would have to take off more time or another day from work. :mad:
That’s fine if you’re not terribly ill, but when you’re in pain you have no choice but to wait.
That’s what I do, too. I once had the doctor call to apologize and it was a weather issue that made him late - not his fault at all. Doing this really works.
I billed a doctor for my time once. This is when I was doing a fair bit of freelance work and charging all my clients by the hour.
I made an appointment and showed up for it about 10 or 15 minutes prior to the appointment. Appointment time came and went, and people who came in after me were being seen before me. Half an hour after my scheduled appointment, the drug rep shows up, talks to the doctor, and leaves. At that point I figured if having some guy try to get you to prescribe whatever drug he’s peddling is more important than seeing a patient, then I’m billing for my waiting room time. Doctor got to me almost 2 hours late, so I told him that my time is just as valuable as his, and that since I have the courtesy to show up on time for appointments, he’d be receiving a bill for all the time I waited when he didn’t show up on time. And I stuck to it, sent him a bill for 2 hours for an ‘on site visit’ with a notation that it was ‘waiting’. In with the bill I enclosed a letter that said he could expect to be billed for my time, by the hour, for the time I was kept in the waiting room after my scheduled appointment. When you do something for me, I pay you, and when I do something for you (wait around to suit your pace), you pay me. I have never waited more than a minute or two past my appointment time in that office again. Apparently he doesn’t want to pay my rates.
I could excuse a late OB - I know I made mine late for a few appointments when my daughter was born mid-afternoon. But the one I never understood was the guy who was almost an hour late for the first appointment of the day! And no apology or even acknowledgement of the delay! Shortly after that, I had another doctor.
By far the worst was the practice that took any HMO that existed. During the year that we had an HMO, we never had an on-time appointment. I was so glad when I was able to get another insurance plan that allowed us to pick our own physician.
I do get steamed by the labs and imaging centers - they always seem to run late also. I can understand that at a hospital, but not at a branch office. Are there really all that many walk-in mammograms?!?
Catsix did he pay you for your time?
Or was it just a point you wanted to make?
I attribute my good health to staying away from doctors but I wasted a whole morning at the courthouse because the judge schedules everybody at 9 am and then gets around to people whenever he gets around to them. He must think people have nothing else to do with their lives. After we get all the doctors and the lawyers I say we go get all the judges.
Last time I went to the Rheumatologist, I was there for 5 hours. As I was waiting to pay afterwards, I fainted - I had gone for too long without food (breakfast had been hours before).
Susan
I’m pretty used to waiting for doctors. I don’t like it ut there are not a lot of options for me.
Some things that do screw up their time…
My nephrologist tends to be a bit late in the mornings as he gets caught up at the hospital on rounds with all those pesky end stage renal patients.
My GP gets overbooked with sick calls. I never make monday appointments, ever.
Some people think the doctor has all day for them. If you are one of these people please book extra time or make your own appointment! I worked with my GP’s wife and she would tell me so many horror stories about people coming in for say a blood pressure check and then turning the session into family day as the wife had ‘just a few little questions’ about her and about their kid.
I do specifically remember having to wait 2 hours one day for an appointment with my GP. The reason turned out to be a little kid who had injured himself so severly he ended up admitted to the hospital. I had a book and was just thankful I wasn’t that hurt.
I moved and have a new GP. I almost never have to wait more than 10 minutes for him. The town we live in now has less than half the people of our old town… I think that has a lot to do with the lower wait times.
Sometimes my OB has to go deliver a baby. As long as he’s on time to deliver mine I’ll be happy. (He was amazing when I had the last one)
Oh and if you’re in the US and your doctor has to schedule according to the guidelines and pressures of the insurance companies and his bosses at the clinic/medical center then expect delays as those people are all about the bottom line.
I read an article about a lawyer who waited nearly two hours for the doctor and seriously billed him the $250+/hour that he charged. The doctor wouldn’t pay. He took him to court. The lawyer argued that acceptance of the appointment was a legal contract and the doctor was bound to that contract within reason. The lawyer won. Fucking beautiful!
Catsix, I’ve fantasized about sending the doctor a bill for my time, but never followed through with it. Keep up the good fight.
I understand about the doctor running late because of emergencies – no problem. But don’t tell me that there’s an emergency every frickin’ time I go to the doctor (I’m directing this at the imaginary doctor, not at any poster).
Choosing another doctor is not always an option, especially if you belong to an HMO. My guess is that a lot of physicians have taken a cue from the airlines, and there’s a lot of double booking going on. God forbid that there should be 15 minutes of wasted time.
However, it seems like a lot of this incipient resentment could be quelled simply by a “I’m sorry, Dr. X had an unexpected emergency at the hospital and is running late.” I’m guessing, though, that explaining to the waiting paitents might not be feasible because there often is simply no good reason for being kept waiting: “I’m sorry, we screwed up again and booked too many people.” Hey, at least give me a free T-shirt or something.
Jeez, it sounds like I hate doctors. I don’t. Some of my favorite people are doctors, and I totally sympathize with them about the jerks who don’t show for appointments, or who show late and demand to be seen. Simple: bill 'em for the missed appointment. You might lose some good will, but I understand that if I don’t give the doctor’s office a chance to fill my slot, the doctor is losing money. And how many patients might you be losing by keeping the jerks happy anyway.
Suck it up, aha. An hour and a half is not that long to be waiting for a doctor. I had an appointment and I still waited 7 hours in the childrens’ waiting room reading Highlights and watching Shrek (not that Shrek was bad)
Back at UK (where I went to med school), one of my classmates observed that clinics never, ever started before 9:00 AM anywhere in the med center. They all started scheduling patients at 8:00, 8:15, or 8:30, but the attendings or residents never showed up until 9:00. I realized that most of them had conferences or meetings scheduled until 9:00.
The worst I was ever in was our urology clinic. Patients at the urology clinic often needed small procedures done; the Good Attending would schedule them for a longer appointment a few days later. The Bad Attending, however, would just do it right then, taking up 45 minutes even though the visit was scheduled for 15. Combine this with the fact that we only had two attendings instead of the usual five, and we probably averaged two to three hours behind. This did not phase the Bad Attending in the slightest.
I remember one night when I was seeing a patient for his 3:15 appointment…at 7:30. The patient had called before he drove an hour to this appointment to make sure they were running on time; he had taken half a day off work. He was furious. Of course, as the med student, I went in first, so I got the brunt of it. When I explained to the BA before he went in that the patient was very angry, he just shrugged.
I am very consistent about bringing people back for another visit if they need more time than I have. I’m also a bitch about late patients, because that’s the one thing that sets our clinic back more than anything. (If they call ahead and I’m not busy, it’s one thing. If they have a good excuse, I’ll consider it. Otherwise, they get rescheduled, even if the office is empty. Can’t encourage them.)
New practice management techniques are also coming into vogue that reduce “overbooking” and wait times; a lot of group practices are now sharing acute care patients so that they don’t have to be “squeezed in”.
Dr. J
He paid. I charged him $50/hour which is what I was charging the client at the time. The office visit was somewhere around $60, so he sent me a check for the balance and has yet to ever keep me waiting again.
" . . . the Good Attending would schedule them for a longer appointment a few days later. The Bad Attending, however, would just do it right then, taking up 45 minutes even though the visit was scheduled for 15."
—Dr. Goofus and Dr. Gallant!
I had to go to an orthopedist for a while as a teenager and the wait was regularly 2-3 hours. For a morning appointment, too.
I don’t mind waiting a bit if I know that the doctor will actually talk to me once they are in the room with me. If I have to wait a half hour and then I get a whole 5 minutes with the doctor … grrrr.
There are situations where I completely understand doctors running late. The pediatrics group we went to when our kids were small would “fit you in” if your kid was unexpectedly ill. When you had to wait for a checkup, you knew it was because they were “fitting in” the acutely ill kids. You knew how many sick kids there were, because they were required to stay in a segregated part of the waiting area. In the well kids area, there were all kinds of toys, books, amusements, so as far as the kids were concerned it was just playtime.
Second is an ob/gyn. The group I went to had 3 doctors in it. Sometimes it happened that 2 or even 3 doctors had to attend to deliveries. On a couple of occasions, I recall that the receptionist told us in the waiting room what the situation was, and gave us the option of waiting it out, coming back later, or rescheduling.
My dentist will also “fit in” acute problems, but they schedule his time very, very carefully. I have never, ever, waited more than 10 minutes in his office.
On the other hand: Two GPs I stopped seeing entirely because they didn’t keep appointments. What was especially galling about both was that the front desk staff lied. I called before leaving work early to see if they were running late and they assured me they were not. Got to the office, asked the same question, and was told it would be just a couple of minutes. A half hour later I asked again, same answer. Waited 5 more minutes, then told the desk person, "Sorry, I have another appointment. I’m leaving now. " “Oh, but it will be just another few minutes.” Well, that’s what you told me a half hour ago. 'Bye.
Basically, any doctor who has to deal with emergencies and whose staff keeps you informed accurately, I have no problem with. Otherwise, I’m sorry, it’s just unrealistic scheduling to have to wait more than 15 minutes.
There are a couple of hospitals in our area who guarantee that you WILL be seen by a doctor in the E.R. within 15 minutes. They keep to it, too. Of course, as is only reasonable, once the initial evaluation is done, they do schedule actual treament on a triage basis, so if you’re there with a broken finger you are going to wait for a good while as they tend to the cardiac emergency or the gunshot victim or whatever.
I work in a VERY busy three dr OB GYN office. I must admit. we do sometimes overbook. There are emergencies that need to be fit-in and we cant very well call the scheduled appts and ask them to reschedule. Well, we could, but we have a three month wait for annual exams as it is!! And of course, sometimes deliveries happen at inconvenient times. That said, we pretty much always run on schedule. If the drs get behind or have to leave to deliver, the receptionists ALWAYS tell the pts, and let them know how long the wait will be, and give them the option to r/s if they like.
I cant imagine leaving a pt sitting there for more than 90 minutes without telling them what the delay is.
Wow, I didn’t know there were Dr.'s offices that didn’t require you to wait 1+ hours. I’ve always been with HMO’s and it’s just the way it’s been. I always make afternoon appointments, take off work early and make sure the rest of my evening is clear so I won’t make myself late for anything.
Ah… to have the freedom to just say “I cannot wait, you’ll have to rechedule me” with a wave of the hand and to float right out of the office. Annual appts. the office I go to have about a 3 month wait as it is, and for everything else, at least a couple of weeks. For emergencies, grab a good book, tent, picnic basket and prepare to make an evening of it. sigh
Welcome to the wonderful world of HMO’s.
Really? The clinic I used to go to for my old health plan could usually squeeze me in either that day or the next if I wasn’t picky about times (if I was sick enough to go to the doctor, I was home from work anyway) and I usually didn’t have to wait too long, maybe 15 minutes.