I have had to wait to see MDs. My favorite ones of course are those who are prompt and spend all the time they need to answer all your questions. Sadly those are very rare but I was spoiled by having one for 16 years. He was exceptional bad sadly is retiring.
I have other providers I like and are good but he is in a class of his own.
The question is if you don’t have a choice for both well managed office and good quality doctor, which would you choose; well managed but not-so-inspiring doc or not-so-well managed but extremely good doc? I would choose the latter in a heart beat and plan accordingly. My eyes are rather delicate and there is some risk going blind later in life. I would wait 3 hours for a good eye doctor. People wait in line for hours to go to the top of Eiffel Tower or get in museums in NY.
For us, it’s due to living in a small town with few options. Many doctors (especially the ENT & ortho) regularly double/triple book appointments because there is nowhere else to go nearby. You either wait or drive 60-90 min each way to the next place. For normal simple type issues, we stay in town and wait. Bigger, more complicated issues we drive. I was amazed when I needed knee surgery and I could drive 75+ min each way and still get home as fast as if I had gone to the ortho in town. Whenever you go to a doctor here, you come prepared to wait.
Whether I’ll wait and whether I’ll be annoyed at long delays has to do with the context and the type of doc. I was very grateful that my OBGYN came in on her vacation to deliver my first baby and she delivered my second baby right in the middle of normal office hours, so it makes sense to me that sometimes my OBGYN runs late or even misses my standard appointments - babies don’t run on schedule. That doesn’t annoy me at all and I’m fine with waiting for a while or rescheduling a standard OBGYN appointment.
But when a doc that doesn’t generally deal with emergencies habitually runs 30 minutes or more late, I find it infuriating. Probably because I move Heaven and Hell to make it on time to my appointments, often missing important work or juggling my entire family’s schedule or leaving at ridiculously early times to beat traffic, but if I say I’ll be at an 8 AM appointment, I will always be there ready at 8 AM. To have an orthodontist or dermatologist or similar doc that doesn’t generally see emergencies be disrespectful of my time (and my family’s because if I’m late out of an appointment that also usually means someone is sitting stranded somewhere waiting for me to pick them up) is frustrating and I have talked to doctors about it. The dermatologist was horrified, apologetic and actually made changes to her office staff. The orthodontist was apologetic but clueless, it continued to happen and of course we have a long term contract so are stuck there until the kid’s braces are off, so I’ve contented myself with sharing the story of how many times he runs late and how his office staff has handled that with not just everybody I know but random strangers at my kids’ school, people sitting in his waiting room, etc.
I spent a LOT of time in waiting rooms for my kids’ pediatric appointments. Then one time I showed up at 2:20 for an appointment I thought was at 2:30. They informed me that the appointment was actually for 2:00 and the doctor would not be able to fit me in. I had come through a snowstorm with two little kids to get there. I was not happy. But the doctor was so good I stuck with him.