I have just, again, walked out of a doctor’s office after being kept waiting too long for an appointment. While my threshold is probably lower than most–I’ll inquire as to why I haven’t been seen 15 or 20 minutes after my scheduled time and bail if not given an adequate explanation for the delay*–I’m befuddled that most people seem willing to be treated poorly by service providers who happen to have some sort of medical degree.
In some cases, legitimate emergencies arise. Mostly, though, it seems to be a function of overbooking for the convenience and/or financial benefit of the business. One doc I quit seeing after being kept waiting on three consecutive early morning appointments liked to book two or three customers for the same time slot.
It’s rare, indeed, for a health care provider to appear on time for their appointments, a practice that’s simply not tolerated in other professions. I don’t know whether physicians, dentists, opthamologists, and the like don’t know how to run a business or really think their time is more valuable than that of their paying customers.
Apparently, they’ve trained most of their customers (or “patients” in the odd parlance of the industry) into accepting the fact that they’ll have to waste a lot of time sitting around waiting for the services for which they’re going to be handsomely billed. People wouldn’t put up with it from an attorney or an accountant, though, and shouldn’t put up with it for an office visit with a doc.
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*In today’s case, I was told that they were waiting for a room to be available. This was for an eye appointment which was already 20 minutes overdue. They don’t have a room for each doctor?
