After having to jump through a number of hoops to get an appointment with a neurosurgeon in Jacksonville who specializes (or at least has an interest in) peripheral nerve tumors, Jeanie and I headed off this morning for my appointment.
In an attempt to be courteous and to help the doctor stay on schedule, we timed our departure such that we would arrive at the doctor's office a half-hour early, so we would have time to fill out all of the paperwork well before the time of the actual appointment.
We were standing at the check-in desk exactly thirty minutes prior to the appointment as planned. It took about fifteen minutes to fill out the paperwork.
My appointment time came and went without any comment from the front desk person.
About fifteen minutes later, the front desk person informs us that there has been a scheduling "mix up" and the doctor is unavailable because he is in surgery - sorry.
I was so angry, I could spit. Doctors routinely over-schedule so that they don't waste one minute of their precious time sitting around waiting on a patient - like they don't have plenty they could do to fill the time like review labs, return phone calls, etc.; they no absolutely no regard for the hours of their patients time that they waste forcing them to sit in crowded uncomfortable waiting rooms. Some doctors now even charge you for the office visit if you don't cancel more than twenty-four hours in advance.
And what can we do when a doctor wastes our time forcing us to wait and wait and wait, or worse yet, doesn't even show up for our appointment?
Nothing!
Nah, you say, just go to a different doctor. Yeah, right. First off, the vast majority conduct themselves in exactly the same matter. Second of all, while that might work for something like self-pay elective cosmetic surgery in a large city like New York or Chicago, the options are much more constrained when you're talking about an obscure sub-speciality in a third-tier metropolitan region.
It's days like this that sometimes make me wish I was more of a screamer. I wouldn't want to scream at the front desk person - it wasn't her fault so she shouldn't have to be punished, but bottling up all of this anger isn't good for my health and well being.
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Posted by David at October 25, 2007 12:33 PM