Feeling under the weather and OTC meds not kicking the bug I have going on, I made an appt. to see my primary care physician. This is only my 2nd appt. with her since I recently purchased health insurance and didn’t have a physician.
My appt. was at 12. I called at 11:30 and asked if she was running on time (I’ve done this in the past; I do have to work as well and the office is across the street from my work). The staff said “oh, she’s 10 min. behind. Come at 12:10”. No problem. I appreciated the heads up even if it was only 10 minutes.
Got there-- I wasn’t seen by the doctor til 2. I waited in the waiting room for a little over an hour before the nurse took my vitals. The Dr. spent 12 minutes with me and told me I have a virus that is going around. Nothing she can do; rest and keep hydrated.
The same thing happened for my initial ‘meet and greet’ appt. Took me 2 hours in the waiting room for her to spend 20 min. with me that time.
Is this a typical wait time? Due to not having insurance, I didn’t have a regular doctor for the past 5-6 years. The dr. I used to see retired; my wait with him was never like this.
Do I have any option besides wait it out or find a new dr.?
I’ve had the same PCP for a long time. We have become friends (same age, both hypertensive, both like to joke around) and I know he’ll jump me ahead if he’s running behind. Before I met him I made an appointment with somebody else. I waited patiently in the waiting room for 45 minutes,then I told the receptionist the wait was unacceptable and I’d find another doctor.
It depends. If I’m seeing my regular nephrologist - you can set a clock by him. If I’m seeing the nurse practitioner in his office I will guarantee you I will wait for an hour past my scheduled appointment. Hell, I’m always surprised she can find the damn office, she’s such a flibbertigibbet.
My primary care physician is a mixed bag. Some visits are very prompt, some not so much. They have a huge sign in the waiting room noting if you’ve waited 20 minutes past your scheduled time to let reception know. I’ve done that a few times and was always taken care of right away.
In my experience, there is no such thing as a typical wait time. I’ve been to urgent care places that saw me right away, and to family doctor appointments where the waits would rival most ERs (e.g. three hours, as a matter of course). I understand the occasional running late due to unforeseen circumstances, but when it happens two or three times in a row I conclude that it’s just the way the way they run their practice, and tend to look elsewhere.
So its pretty much luck of the draw/hit or miss with the waiting time.
That is where I’m headed-- looking elsewhere. I thought maybe once was a fluke, but seeing as though it’ll be a consistent matter, it might be best to look elsewhere.
That stinks. For a new GP, yeah, I probably would look elsewhere. It’s not as if you are “established” and have tons of history to go over again with a new doc. My old endocrinologist, though, used to do this, 2+ hours wait time, and I stuck around rather than have to go to a different town. He’s have 8-10 pts. lined up in tiny rooms and go down the line; you’d wait another hour in the exam room…I don’t get it. Trying to get enough Medicare patients to break even, is my guess.
Even within the same practice, wait times can vary hugely. At the pediatrician’s office, we usually wait 15 minutes to see Dr. P, but more like 45 to see Dr. W. The PCP’s office is the same - you can set your watch by Dr. G, but if Dr. H is filling in for her? An hour. And the orthopaedic practice that Tony goes to: The PAs run mostly on time, Dr. C (the pain management/back specialist) is very punctual, and Dr. N? We’ve waited three hours for an appointment with him. To be fair to Dr. N, though, he’s also on call for traumas at the Level 1 trauma center. I can’t really fault him for running behind, because it’s usually because he got called in to help someone having a far worse crisis than waiting too long to see the doctor!
It’s faster that way. Inconvenient and, in my opinion, highly inconsiderate of your time, but on the other hand, that’s how people are. If it wasn’t the doctor being inconsiderate of your time, you’d have a those 8-10 people before you in one or two rooms being inconsiderate of your time. You would not BELIEVE how slow some people can be about getting dressed and gathering their things and making one last phone call and then checking their Facebook before they vacate the fucking room. 10-20 minutes is not unusual, and then it has to be cleaned between patients. So 10+ minutes X 10 people means you’re waiting 100+ extra minutes for that waiting room instead of 60 waiting in it - in *addition *to the time the doctor spends with each of them.
If he lines you up like a little assembly line, he can see double the people in the same amount of time, going from room to room where people are waiting for him. The problem *I *now have is that, as a nurse trying to call him on the phone about one of his homebound patients, he doesn’t have little 10 minute breaks between each patient like he used to. I can never get through on the first or second call; I have to catch him while he’s peeing.
Here’s my story. If I didn’t have a serious eye problem and this guy wasn’t the leading ophthalmologist in the city, maybe in the whole province, I wouldn’t put up with it. The first time I made an appointment, his appointment secretary told me to expect to wait 3 hours. I asked why I couldn’t just come three hours later. She replied that in that case he would not see me. So I cane on time and, sure enough, waited three hours. Once I had an appointment with him at 3:30. My wife and I had concert tickets that night. I didn’t actually see him till nearly 8 and we missed the concert. Now I simply bring my e-reader and read.
The other side of the coin is that, aside from his skill, he explains everything clearly and leaves the final decision to me. (He could operate again but there is a 30% chance the retina will tear again and he advises against it, but it is entirely up to me.) Also, when I had a minor problem in the other eye (it turned out to be posterior capsular opacification), he was delighted that he could fix it in a few minutes with a laser.
Similar to Hari: The three-hour guy is worth the wait. He’s very, very good at putting broken people back together, and my Tony was very, very broken after his wreck. Plus, he’s very good at explaining, explaining again if something didn’t sink in the first time, and asking the important questions, and even making sure that we have his personal cell phone # in case questions or problems arise. In addition to his surgical calls, I know that his appointments run behind because he spends the extra time with his patients. That’s a doctor worth waiting for, in my opinion.
My PCP is often late. And yes, hours. Most of his patients are elderly…I suspect it’s them being slow that makes him late. Also his office was connected to a hospital and often he’d be over there seeing patients before coming to the office and the hospital made him late.
All the nurse practitioners were usually on time. I think the one I saw would schedule 30 mins for her appointments instead of 15, because she spent a lot of time with me.
Now the doc is out of the hospital building so I don’t know if that means he’ll be more on time or will be less on time because he’ll still be going to the hospital(s) to visit patients and have to drive to the practice.
I always laugh when people who are against universal health care cite “wait times will be long, like in Canada!” as a reason not to put the country on that system. Cuz I wonder where the hell they go to a doctor where there’s no wait time!
Primary care docs try to get people in to see them if they are sick, but it sounds as if your doc’s office isn’t scheduling well (leaving appointments open for some people to come in unexpectedly), or it’s a norm to overbook.
Personally, I can understand a wait sometimes. During flu season, I get that everyone and their brother is sick, and 2/3 of them need a note for work. Ok. Especially if the doctor has “squeezed” me in. I’ll wait.
That said, I have left doctors over *recurring *overbooking and crazy-long waits. It’s disrespectful of the patient.
If I were the OP, I might try to find a new PCP who has better scheduling.
Sorry, that wasn’t clear…I meant, left their practice as a patient. Not, left that day. Until recently, I didn’t have to go in for checkups or regular visits, so if I went to the doctor I felt pretty lousy.
When people talk about wait times in Canada, they mean waiting for a procedure, not waiting in the doctor’s office. Like waiting a year for a hip replacement or the like. I have not personally experienced that. When my retina tore, I was under the knife in 6 days. No wait there.
But everyone who needs that hip replacement gets it eventually, while in the US only those who can afford it do. And hospitals here are run as service institutions, not profit-making ones.
Agreed. For a hip or knee replacement you’ll probably wait, but if it’s anything possibly life-threatening (or something that can blind you) they’re all over it. My own example: Years ago, I had one or two seizures. (The first was while I was asleep in bed with no witnesses, but I woke up with a broken shoulder. Something was going on!) I saw my doctor, he set me up with a neurologist the same week, and the EEG didn’t show anything interesting. The neurologist told me he’d set up an appointment for a scan. I did a little shopping and had lunch, and by the time I got home I had missed two potential appointments. I called back and got in the same afternoon. Not bad service at all!
I stopped going to two primary care doctors because of a similar problem. In both cases, I had called ahead to ask if the doctor was on schedule and was assured that they were. Then I waited… and waited… and asked again and was told it would be “any minute.” I finally just left and never went back. I was not billed for the visit. If I had been, I’d have said, “I was there; the doctor didn’t keep the appointment.”
With some specialties, like OB/GYN, it’s inevitable that emergencies will disrupt the schedule. One time when I arrived for the appointment, the gatekeepers were telling everyone that ALL the doctors in the group practice were currently assisting with active deliveries at the hospital. We were given the choice of waiting it out or rescheduling.
I wouldn’t mind if I got the truth. I went in with a child-in-arms, asked the receptionist if there was a wait, then stood/sat/walked around with the child in my arms for 1:15. Read the sign on the wall that said a wait longer than 1/2 hour would only be if the doctor was delayed by something more important. Then left. Found a different doctor.
I don’t know if the receptionist was incompetent or under instruction. Beyond a certain point, incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.