I don’t know what “most people” do…Our kids switched to my PCP as early teens. Mostly for convenience. (Though, it would have seemed odd to walk into a pediatrician’s office with all the children’s toys and books with teenagers).
The last time I visited my old OB/GYN, I waited more than 2 hours. Then, the doctor comes out and whispers to receptionists not to make his colleague’s wife who had just walked in. At that point I got up and ask a refund of my copay and left the practice for good.
That was my kiddo’s concern. 
She said she did not want to be confused for a teenage mom, lol. And she said she did not want to take the precious appointment slots from little kiddos. But the doctors were so awesome she continued getting her medical care there. The office had a few docs specializing in teenage health issues.
My 2 oldest saw the pediatrician till they were through college. It was nice to not have to start over. My younger D stopped seeing the pediatrician around 19 when she stopped coming home for the summer. They all saw the same Dr from birth. It was a 5 person office and they could see another Dr if their Dr was not available. I miss our pediatrician as after so many years I felt like she was a friend.
What I don’t like about the large group in my area is the many layers you have to go through to see the Dr. When you go to see a Dr there you first have to check in at the main desk and again once you get to your actual Dr. This means you have to give yourself an extra 30 minutes prior to your appointment Plus they tend to overbook. I’m spoiled and I want to be able to park my car and walk in 5 minutes prior to my appointment.
I will be honest that I know many people who go to the above clinic and are very happy with their care. My S has an HMO through his work that requires him to use the above clinic. They have a small satellite office near his office and he was able to get a same day appointment for an earache. So some benefits of using a large clinic.
Our allergist has become our 26 and 28 year old “kids” primary care doc because she will always fit them in when they’re in town and they DO have allergies. She honestly thinks of them as partly HER kids and they’ve only seen the internist once or twice ever and his specialty is geriatrics anyway. All of us will wait however long it takes to see our allergist because she gives undivided attention and is excellent. We have been known to wait hours.
This thread is so timely. I just filled out a “how did we do?” survey for an Ear, Nose & Throat specialist I saw for my first visit ever to an ENT specialist. I waited 4 months for the appointment. Two days before my appointment, his office called and cancelled because he had a surgery scheduled. (Coincidentally, it was the day after the long 4th of July weekend… hmmmm).
They wanted to reschedule for the following day because they were cancelling so last minute, but of course I had a full calendar, and asked for something the following week. They gave me an appointment late morning (always a bad idea, I know, but I had waited so long… my original appointment was first one of the day). I hit 2 different road closures on my way there, so I parked and sprinted across a 2 different parking lots and up 3 flights of stairs so I would be there promptly. I left all my usual stuff in the car, reading glasses, book, etc (even my phone) because I was so worried about being late.
They told me when I arrived that he was “running a little behind.” Okay, that was not unexpected given the time of day. (I am also very aware that they tell you 11:40 when the actual appointment is 11:55 or noon - because of so many patients who are late). So I expected a bit of a wait. I squinted at a few magazines while I waited. Four people came in after me, and all went in before me. (In fairness, there are other doctors with different specialties in the same area, but I heard at least one patient, who arrived 20 minutes after me, name my doctor as the one she was seeing).
Finally, the last one in the waiting room, and while the staff all started departing & subbing in as they worked around their scheduled lunches, I was ushered into the exam room after a full hour wait. The (really not nice at all) intake nurse asked all the routine questions, including all the ones I had answered in great detail on the patient questionnaire. (That alone had stressed me out, as it was the first time I had to write that my father was “deceased,” having just lost him a few weeks ago). There was a second person there, who appeared to be a trainee learning to use the new computer system (she was not introduced to me, so much for patient confidentiality), so this process took awhile. I tried not to be annoyed, but both women were so unfriendly that even that one thing wouldn’t have made it so miserable at the end of the day. This whole process took about 20 minutes.
They left and I was left in the small room, overlooking a roof, with no reading materials, nothing to do but stare at the wall. Which I did for another 45 minutes. I kept hearing the doctor outside my door, including the tell-tale looking at my chart hanging on the door noises, waiting expectantly for him to enter. But then he kept moving on. After 25 minutes, the intake nurse popped her head in and (no apology) said the doctor was delayed because “something came up.” Exact words. I couldn’t believe it, and was pretty annoyed at this point, so I asked what possibly could have come up as i was the last one in the waiting room and it was now nearly an hour & a half after I had arrived. She mumbled something and hightailed out of there.
He arrived 20 minutes later, apologizing profusely, and explaining that there had been an “emergency.” (This is in an office setting, not a hospital, so trying to figure out what an ENT emergency could be, but neither here nor there). He was very nice and a good doctor and very thorough (although unable to diagnose my problem without recommending a CT scan of my face, which I am not too keen about).
PLEASE, I told him, consider having the front office be very transparent about what else is going on in the office upon arrival, during your wait, and maybe even phoning before you leave to get there (which others here have experienced, as have I). Secondly, BRING ME OR AT LEAST OFFER some reading materials! I would have squinted away at a 1982 People Magazine at that point. Finally, and most importantly give periodic updates and ALLOW ME THE OPPORTUNITY TO RESCHEDULE!
All told, I was there beginning to end 2-1/2 hours. And there is no diagnosis
This was last week. Don’t get me started on my daughter’s 2 visits to two different ERs within a span of 3 hours three days ago, because the first one - one of the most reputable hospitals in the country, or the world for that matter - had a broken machine (broken for 5 months, we later learned), so they could not properly determine what was wrong with her eye after she had walked past a busy construction site and immediately knew something had flown into her eye. A PA, but not the doctor, was the only one to examine her, and they sent her home with a diagnosis of pink eye but no antibiotic drops and instructions that if there was no improvement in 48 hours, go to the other ER. She knew whatever was wrong with her eye was not pink eye and was just not right, so she tried to rest but a little over 2 hours later she went to the other ER. She got there at 10pm. At 1:30 am, she still hadn’t been seen. Finally she was looked at by an eye specialist, who was furious when he found out the other hospital’s machine was broken, as they are affiliated and hospital 1 hadn’t sent her immediately over to hospital 2 for the proper exam. Nor had they (duh, don’t have to be a doctor to figure this out) sent her home with preventative antibiotics even though she probably had construction material in her eye and there was already infection pus presenting. Turns out she had a small piece of glass lodged in her cornea. Which only could be detected by the machine, of course. Umm, pretty darn dangerous. Had my daughter not trusted her instinct and waited longer, well, I shudder to think what may have happened.
thank you for the opportunity to vent. There are several other non-medical things that have happened this week around here that are just TOO much to believe, including more crazy bad luck happening to same daughter. Hand me the bottle, never mind the glass!
That was wrong of the patient, but I use that tactic with my primary and they sometimes will slip me in before my appointment time if it’s going to be like a 4-minute appointment. Needless to say, I wouldn’t raise a stink if they didn’t. But all of my doctors (all in a large regional medical group) are almost always on time.
Our ER, on the other hand, is Dante’s seventh level of hell. I used to have to take my dad there a lot, and if we were out in under 8 hours, I considered it a big win. Great hospital upstairs. But the ER is horrendous.
I am a doctor and I wait several hours to see my personal physician. I don’t mind at all because she is worth it. I bring my kindle and enjoy the wait. We call ourselves “patients” for a reason. My practice tends to run more smoothly but I am in a specialty that tends to be on time. And for people who want to know what kind of emergencies we can have in an office? All kinds of emergencies.
I wrote earlier in the threat that I am a NP in family practice who really tries to be on time so I am looking for ideas of how we can all do better. To me, the hardest thing is not knowing how long the wait is. If the wait is long, I can reschedule, or I can get out a project I need to work on (always with me at the doctors). I really don’t like being put in a room and waiting longer than 30 minutes. I noticed that my local large nationally recognized university hospital has a board in the waiting room which lists each doctor with an estimate of how long the wait is. To me, this is much appreciated. I’m trying to figure out if this would be practical at my much smaller clinic in which the front staff has no idea how far behind we are. Maybe the clinical staff can update every hour?
@NinaReilly, so is your D now going to be charged for two ER visits, when it should have been just one (if the first ER had immediately referred her on because their machine was broken) to the other hospital?
I just opened a bill for a missed appointment. Last month I went to the dr and was diagnosed with a uti. I had never really had one before, and hadn’t been doing anything different which was strange. I was told if I wasn’t better to come back in 2 days. In 2 days I was feeling much worse and called them in agonizing pain. I was given a same day appointment for the afternoon. Within a short time I ended up being taken to the er with a kidney stone. Not sure if any of you ever suffered from one but you’ll have to imagine I was not of clear mind to call and cancel. I called and told them afterwards about the trip to the er…which the records are sent to them. They won’t take off the missed appointment charge.
Coming back to the issue of small private practices vs large groups or hospital owned groups, healthcare reimbursement may be changing in the future with several proposals on the table, and it may be difficult for the solo practitioner to stay in business. This is more complex that I can begin to try to explain, but this article may help https://www.advisory.com/research/care-transformation-center/care-transformation-center-blog/2014/09/deciphering-the-reform-alphabet
Eyeamom-
Call and speak to the practice manager (if it is a large enough group that has that) Were you heading to the appt when you needed instead to go to the ER or did they tell you to go to the ER?
@CTTC - yes, I am bracing for two bills. We have great insurance but ER copays are still quite a chunk (and I worry that the insurance will even flag it as being too close together to pay both visits). I called the first hospital yesterday to try to head it off; they directed me to Patient/Family Relations but I got a machine and left a message… they may not even call me back because D is a young adult (even though we are the ones paying the bills) so I am trying to figure out how to approach hospital 1 about it.
Our pediatrician’s office takes a 1 hour lunch break. I don’t care when they work or don’t work. I only know that I have never waited more than 10 minutes and that is as it should be.
I left a previous family doctor because of routine waits of more than 30 minutes.
@NinaReilly, I hope you get it straightened out with the first hospital! My only suggestion is to document it all in writing. Since your d is a young adult, you could write any letters/emails for her and then have her sign or email them.
Seems like any office, whether a small or solo one, or one that is part of a large practice, should be able to record the appointment time and the actual time that the patient is seen. The time and length of interruptions for emergencies can also be logged.
Then the data can be used to find out how and when delays occur and how bad they are, so that the office can adjust the appointment scheduling to be more realistic.
Really, if an 8am-5pm scheduled day becomes an 8am-8pm day most of the time due to delays, why not schedule appointments for 8am-8pm days instead of unrealistically scheduling appointments for an 8am-5pm days that usually become 8am-8pm days?
Because then they would become 8am-11pm days? There is this thing about human nature…
Again, this is where you may have different amounts of discretion in a group / corporately-owned practice than a privately owned one. The corporate practice may say they only want you open 8 am-5 pm (or some such). The private one can do what he or she likes.
If you had N appointments scheduled for 8am-5pm that always run to 8pm instead of 5pm, why not schedule the same N appointments for 8am-8pm, with longer spacing between them? I.e. do not try an cram in more than N appointments because you are “adding” (really just recognizing the existence of) 3 more hours to the daily schedule.