A message to my Congressman

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tommy

I suspect our differences are because we have fundamentally different views on the purpose of the health care system.

I'm not so sure of that. I have views of our system from a patient point of view, from my personal experiences, relatives, friends, and every social function where I'm asked questions, and patients telling me about their other family members, their health problems and experiences. I've heard alot. It doesn't bother me personally to wait to a degree. I believe I also understand the business of healthcare to a depth greater than most other physicians.

Originally Posted by Tommy

, I've found that for some doctors even the first appointment of the day is not seen on time because the staff will allow people without appointments to walk in and be seen. I also learned that several of my doctors schedule appointments in clumps. For example, they'll schedule three people at 9:00 AM and then three more at 9:30 AM. This says that even if things go exactly on schedule, one patient will be seen ten minutes late and the next twenty minutes late. It's a great way to assure the doctor has no empty spots in his schedule at the expense of making patients wait. I just happen to think that an hour of my life is as important to me as an hour of his life is to him.

The two most common excuses for long waits are (1) we want to make sure each patient gets all the time he needs to be treated properly, and (2) an unexpected emergency arose that required the doctor's time. The problem with both of those excuses is they ignore the fact that the doctor could factor in time for both of those situations if he (1) cared about wasting his customers' time, and (2) monitored the average wait time for his patients and adjusted future scheduluing to reduce the waiting time. I agree that there is no way to assure a particular patient will not have to wait on a particular day, but over a period of a month the average wait should not be excessive.

I schedule my patients in a similar block pattern. Scheduling on 10 min intervals does not work. You get the first 2 patients showing up 15-20 min late, and your behind 20-30 min at the beginning of the day. You bet that some patients will show up on time, others late, others earlier. Scheduling in blocks works best for me. The reality is that with decreasing reimbursements, a doctor's office has to operate at high efficiency, which means less efficiency for the patients. I have to wait personally for my appointments as well. Although waiting time is important, competency is of greater importance, and there is no correlation between waiting time and competency. If you lose some patients, well that's the risk.

I was going to go on more, but my staff is telling me that there are 5 patients backed up now. I guess I have to go and see them.