Waiting for the doctor... and waiting and waiting Story Highlights
Many Empowered Patient readers complain about long waits at their
doctors' offices
Long waits are a common complaint
One patient got so mad he even sued his medicine man for being late --
and won $250 in small claims court.
Among helpful strategies: complain in a letter, schedule smartly, find
another doctor
Ditch your doctor.
(But how do you know if you are getting a better medicine man until
you visit him and get to know him.) How do you know **** from putty
until your windows fall out? Chances are he is no better than your
last experience?
Ideal Medical Practices Project lists practices that try to be on time
By Elizabeth Cohen
CNN Medical Correspondent
To kill time in the obstetrician's waiting room, Lora Jacobsen and her
husband, Dustin, discuss names for their future child. Then they read
old parenting magazines left in the waiting room. As the minutes tick
by -- 30 then 45 then more than 60 -- they play games and check e-mail
on their cell phones.
Dustin and Lora Jacobsen (with Maya) endured long waits at their OB's
office but chose to stay with the practice.
"One day I got so bored I took a video of myself circling around in
the chair," says Dustin, who posted the video and blogged about his
wait.
"Really, what else are you going to do?"
His daughter Maya recently celebrated her first birthday, but
Jacobsen, who lives in Leawood, Kansas, can still recall in vivid
detail how maddening it was to spend so much time, month after month,
waiting to see the doctor -- and he isn't the only one seething at the
doctor's office. Others have posted videos of their long waits, like
one woman who do***ents her three-hour wait in an exam room, and this
man who declares, "This sucks. I hate doctors' offices."
Long waits are also a common complaint on our weekly Empowered Patient
"sound-offs."
"Why has it become routine to make patients wait two to three hours to
be seen?" asked one Empowered Patient reader.
"First, you wait in the main waiting area, then the nurse takes you
into a small room, takes your vitals, and you are left in a holding
pattern for another hour. You are treated rudely if you even dare to
utter a complaint."
"Am I seriously supposed to believe that every single one of my
doctors have so many 'emergencies' during the day that they are forced
to be late seeing me?" asked another Empowered Patient reader. "Get
real. It's called over-booking."
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One patient got so mad he even sued his doctor for being late -- and
won $250 in small claims court. By being four hours late, Aristotelis
Belavilas says, his physician was giving the message that "I'm God and
you're not and I do whatever I want."
It's probably fair to say none of us ever wants to sit so long in a
doctor's waiting room that we resort to filing a lawsuit or
videotaping ourselves. But there are strategies you can use to try and
prevent frustrating waits. Learn how to avoid long waits at the
doctor's office =BB
1. Stage a revolt
"I ended up waiting two hours to see my gynecologist once, and I just
went nuts," says Joanna Lipari, who lives in Santa Monica, California.
"I'm a New York Italian, and we don't go well for this kind of stuff.
I was so irritated that I gathered together the other eight ladies in
the room and joked, 'Let's stage a revolt.' "
The other women took her seriously, and wrote letters to the doctor.
"I told her she's a wonderful doctor, but this really wasn't cool. I
told her it was inconvenient, uncomfortable and spoke badly for an
otherwise exceptional medical practice," says Lipari. "I was trying to
change her behavior, and it worked. They changed the way they
scheduled appointments."
Lipari, a psychologist who herself works in a large medical practice,
says sometimes doctors don't even realize how long their patients have
been waiting. She adds that her gynecologist still is late sometimes
(after all, she does deliver babies), but when she is, the office
calls Lipari ahead of time to alert her.
A letter from you might be the wake-up call your doctor needs, Dr. L.
Gordon Moore, a family practice doctor in Seattle, Wa****ngton. "We've
seen hundreds of practices turn things around," says Moore, who's on
the faculty of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which has
some of these "improvement stories" listed on their Web site.
2. Ditch your doctor
Ditch your doctor and try one on this map from the Ideal Medical
Practices Project. Moore is the director and says the physicians on
this map are working towards being on time for their patients.
Unfortunately, there's a limited number of doctors on this site, but
you can always ask your friends if they have a doctor who doesn't make
them wait.
3. Don't wait more than 15 minutes
When you're in the waiting room, speak up sooner rather than later.
"After 15 minutes, max, ask the receptionist what's happening and if
you've been forgotten," Moore says.
4. Be a smart scheduler
Sean Kelley has diabetes and spends more than his fair share of time
in doctors' waiting rooms. In a recent blog for Health magazine, he
offered these scheduling tips:
=95 Book the first appointment in the morning, or the first appointment
after lunch
=95 Ask the scheduler to book you on the lightest day of the week
(Kelley says for some reason his doctor's office is nearly empty on
Wednesdays).
=95 Avoid school holidays if your doctor or dentist sees kids.
For some more scheduling strategies from Lipari, read her blog.
Health Library
MayoClinic.com: Health library
Kelley's pet peeve: Drug reps who waltz into the doctor's office when
he's been waiting for two hours. "They just wave at the receptionist
and walk right in. And you can always spot a drug rep because they're
dragging luggage behind them and they're always cute," Kelley says.
"They can see the doctor whenever they want. How'd they get the keys
to the kingdom?"
5. Shut up and wait
This was the Jacobsens' decision. They liked their obstetrician and
didn't want to switch in the middle of her pregnancy.
During my third pregnancy, I made the same decision. I had several
ridiculously long waits for my obstetrician, and learned to bring a
good book and my laptop computer.
To their credit, during one three-hour-long wait, a nurse came out and
apologized, explaining the doctor had run to the hospital to deliver a
baby. Not wanting to incur the wrath of a roomful of hungry pregnant
women, she brought us granola bars and bottles of water. I forgave
them instantly, and went to him again for baby number four.
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Suggestion. Call before the visit and take lunch orders for everyone
in the office, like the pimps from the pharmacutical companies do.
Then stop at the restaurant to pick up the lunches for the doctor and
his office apostoles.. Suck up in other words and you get right in to
see God himself. My medicine man has lunch delivered by a pimp on
Friday and seems to favor Chick-fil-A=AE "Home of the Original Chicken
Sandwich:" food.. However, still bring a good book and a laptop
computer.along just in case.
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