I'll bet 98% of patients don't complain about long wait times. the physician, bouncing from exam room to exam room is in an entirely different universe and usually has no idea what life is like in the waiting room. I can excuse emergencies, but when the doctor's patients have to wait ever single time, then it needs to be addressed.

The copay idea is great. What if the patient called before leaving their home or office and asked the receptionist what the wait time was? The office would have to make some changes such as being willing to change the appointment by however much the doctor was running late.

This would probably be a favor for the doctor who wouldn't feel as rushed.

Cam, I agree that the medical profession has a real p.r. problem, and many doctors make it worse by their insensitive treatment of their customers.

My wife always has a ridiculous wait to see her ob/gyn. A recent mammogram showed a possible abnormality and the doctor, wanting to be thorough, ordered a sonogram to check more closely.

So far, fine. But here's the problem -- the doctor didn't give my wife this news. It was the doctor's secretary, who told my wife it's probably nothing, but Dr. Kanganis (in Bronxville NY) wants to be certain.

Understandably, my wife was scared by this news and wanted to talk with the doctor. She called and left several messages over the course of a week, with no callbacks from Dr. Kanganis. Finally, she got through to the secretary, who told my wife, except for emergencies, we only make calls to patients on Tuesdays and Thursdays (or something like that). And even then, the secreatry makes the calls, not the Great Doctor.

Polly Kanganis may be a fantastic ob/gyn, but I'm pushing my wife to make a change as soon as she can. And when she does, she's got to tell the doctor why she's switching. Doctors must have feedback from patients not intimidated to let them know when they're behaving badly.

Cool, that you have customer service at the doctor's office, in Germany we pay 10 Euro for Entrance and then we wait hours.

See you,

Heiko :-)

Having worked in the healthcare industry, I cannot defend nor even ably respond to how to fix the mess (at least .

What I do know, is that if you think wait times and customer service aren't a priority now, just wait til/if we move to "universal healthcare". You ain't seen nothing yet!

This topic is one of my favorites, having moved from Canada'a universal health care system to the U.S.

First, let me say to you, David, that I think the doctor's protocol of returning calls ONLY two days a week is shameful. This is a prime example of horrible customer service. We're not talking about plumbing services here - it's about people's health and emotional well-being.

As for a bad PR problem, I believe this extends way past that. It's understandable that doctors will try their best to accommodate emergencies and last-minute sick patients, but that should be accounted for when the office staff make the appointment schedule. What is unacceptable is that many doctors are either oblivious or uncaring about the fact that patients are waiting for long periods of time. That implies that their time is more valuable than ours.

I think some of it is attributable to greed and some with the need to meet overhead costs. Docs have many expenses, especially with malpractice insurance.If they can ram as many patients into a day as they can, that means more money generated for the practice. On the other hand,

In Canada, where there's a salary ceiling, some doctors I saw had long wait times and others did not. I never had to wait longer than 5-10 minutes to see my GP. Somehow, he managed to make a decent living without making us feel like cattle. Yet the opthamologist's visit was an ordeal, often a 90-minute experience from entrance to exit.

Paul - My first draft dealt with the universal consequences of forbidding price to fluctuate in a way that affected demand, like how insurance does to a degree, and in a way universal health care will do to the nth degree.

Without a doubt, that is part of the problem.

I chose to take all of that out, for better or for worse, so that I could make the simple point that, whatever the cause is, even if there is no immediate financial incentive for doctors' offices to improve their quality of customer service (my spot would be filled in a second if I left this doctor), there is still a powerful reason to do so.

The only consequence today's politicians have to deal with is their reelection. By the time universal health care crumbles under its own weight, today's politicians will be long gone, having already procured a very esteemed living for themselves off of the public dollar while everyone else celebrated them for their noble intentions without respect to their short-sightedness.

What about the other side of the relationship? My pediatrician makes it clear that the parents are responsible for arriving on time and prepared for their appointment: if you are late, you lose your spot in line and have to wait.

He also makes it very clear that you should be upfront about how many questions and complaints you want to discuss with him: appointments are for 15 minutes unless arranged in advance. That's generally enough time for a consult and an evaluation of one problem.

The advantage to this system? Every time we have called with an emergency, he has been able to see us within two hours.

Sometimes, the client is wrong. Even if they have an earache and green poopie.

I was just in a waiting room with my pregnant wife for what seemed like forever. While we waited, drug company reps were coming into the waiting room and were rushed right in to meet with....the doctor! Yes, the doctor was scheduling HER business on OUR time. I called her on it and she got mad at me!!

Lawrence - I don't think I can add anything to what you said... but congrats on the pregnancy! :)

The poor customer service extends beyond the rude wait times. The office staff routinely demand social security numbers and copies of drivers licenses, neither of which are needed for the service they provide or for insurance billing. This personal information is gathered only in the event they need to turn your account over to a collection agent. Meanwhile, should one of the $10/hour billing clerks turn out to be a criminal, the doctors files are gold mines for identity thieves. When I politely withhold this sort of personal information, the office clerk inevitably rolls her eyes and seeks assistance from a supervisor to deal with my insubordination.

You can blame the health insurance companies for most of the problems described here. The crippling load of paperwork and the amount of malpractice insurance required for a doctor to maintain a practice means that they have a choice of either raising their rates exorbitantly to cover costs or scheduling as many patients as they can during office hours. They also can't necessarily pay top dollar for administrative staff if they want to keep fees from going over the top.

And for those who don't know, the days a doctor is not in the office, s/he is usually making hospital rounds, in surgery, attending as part of a hospital staff, on call covering for another doctor, or holding office hours in another location to serve another population. They don't play nearly as much golf as you think!

I hate waiting, too--so I get there early. Some doctors are good about keeping the wait short; others aren't. When I see a doctor, I'd rather have their attention for at least 15 minutes rather than 5, so for the physicians who provide that, I'm willing to wait.

Dr. Kanganis is one of the best doctors I've seen--and I've been through many gynos, in Manhattan and elsewhere. She treats patients like whole human beings, not body parts.

About messages: a doctor doesn't always get messages immediately--it depends on the answering service or administrative staff. And as anyone in the business world knows, sometimes that's a crapshoot.
If a doctor knows there's no emergency, s/he won't call back right away. S/he may be dealing with real emergencies, working in the O.R., delivering babies, etc. You can be assured that if there were a suspected malignancy in the mammogram, Kanganis would've been on the case instantly.

If the AMA would take back medicine from the insurance companies, we'd all get better health care. Think back 20 years or so--we weren't waiting forever to see a doctor, we weren't rushed in and out, and you could actually get a doctor on the phone. Now they barely have time to breathe. You'd be surprised how many of them don't even get to eat lunch.

Instead of bitching at doctors (except for those who truly deserve it), start agitating for health care reform. You can find plenty of ways to do that online. And if you have an iPhone, you can even do it while you're waiting in the doctor's office.