I’m on a county-subsidized health care plan, so I’m pretty much grateful that anybody will see me.
It does strike me as ironic that they always say to be “fifteen to twenty minutes early” for your appointment, though. WHY? Like it’s going to make a difference!
The last time I was at the doctor’s office for an early morning appointment, one of the nurses walked through the waiting area, which was crammed, and sighed, in an under-his-breath-but-I-hope-they-hear-me way, and said, “Sure wish the docs would show up!”
I guess he was trying to make it clear that it wasn’t his fault we were all waiting around.
And to be fair, my appt. was at 9:30 a.m., and I saw the doc at 9:50.
I thought that was more than fair for County health care.
My endocrinologist (before cancer diagnosis) woul often be running hours and hours behind. No patients ever left. He was good and patient, and had the staff keep you updated on how long the delay would be. Once you were in his office, no other patients existed, though. YOU were the focus of his attention. If handling your issues for the day took more than your alloted time, he didn’t run you out the door. Of course, he was a GYN-Endo, so he had a number of extenuating circumstances. The birth of babies for his infertility patients were the usual big delays, but the hospital actually built a crosswalk from his office building to the hospital to help him cut down on transit time.
After the cancer, I found that you just take a number and wait. If you go in at 6AM for tests, then have a 10 AM appointment with the general oncologist, then more tests, you WILL be late for your 2:00 with your other doctor. But as in every medical area, emergencies come first.
Almost any specialty can have emergencies. I was seeing a plastic surgeon (they were considering having a specialty proceedure to close my lost surgical incision, as it had problems) and they came out to tell us that there would be a 3 hour delay for an emergency. One woman asked exactly HOW does one have emergency plastic surgery? Does their face suddenly slip down ther neckline? Turns out there was a kid that had been “skinned” in a car wreck, the scalp and facial skin just peeled off. They needed a plastics guy to do the major reconstruction and replacement of the tissue…
It IS a lot easier to wait when you’re kept informed.
I’m glad you mentioned the emergency plastic surgery thing. My friend was recently scheduled for breast reduction surgery and she emailed me to let me know that it had been pushed back due to an “emergency.” I scratched my head for awhile on that one, trying to imagine what would constitute a plastic surgery “emergency.”
The worst clinic I had to go to this past year would start scheduling patients for 8 a.m. appointments. At 8, the clinic staff consisted of the nurses and me, the often clueless M3. The residents would get there around 9-9:30 because they had a conference at 8. The attendings would get there sometime between 9 and 10. I think the logic behind this was that I could have seen all the patients already in the rooms (8 patients!) and have H&Ps or notes done on them and that the residents could start checking them out quickly. Great in theory, but seemed somewhat less than ideal in practice.
The other thing about that clinic and the clinics in general is that there is an extremely high (for some clinics greater than 50%) no show rate so while 40 patients might be scheduled probably only 20 would show up. On other days, patients would actually show up and it would be chaos.
