Patients need to realize that a physician's office is not a restaurant. You may not get called to your table immediately and your doctor may have times where the schedule falls behind due to emergencies or especially complicated patients with an extended history of illness and medications.
You should expect that the care you will be rendered when you finally see the doctor will be unhurried and that all of your questions and treatment options will be discussed in detail. When you leave the office, you should be satisfied that you received the best treatment possible and that you are certain of any post visit instruction.
Unfortunately, many physician practices have no idea what a schedule means and chronically run behind schedule day after day. The problem here is two fold. First, if a physician is not meeting his daily schedule obligations and patients and extended waiting times are the norm, his or her schedule is almost certainly overcrowded. Every office should have a time protocol for both new patients and return visits and gauge the physicians overall practice style and adjust his schedule accordingly. In the rush to meet volume requirements, you may end up losing valuable patients along with new patients who will leave prior to their visit or never return. After only a few weeks, the front office should be aware of the practice style of each of their physicians and adjust time schedules to meet his or her method of treatment.
Secondly, the front office should note the ebb and flow of daily visits. If the physician is running two hours behind, the front office staff should call the next set of patients and ask them to arrive two hours later. Often the staff is anxious to go home for the day and would rather deal with disgruntled patients who approach the front desk to voice complaints rather than having to put in extra hours or call in alternate staff to cover the late hours.
In the worst case scenario, patients are put into a treatment room and forgotten for extended periods of time, behind a closed door without reading materials or anything else to do. Many patients will wait for ridiculous amounts of time without opening the door and checking on the doctors progress, while others will simply get dressed and exit without saying a word to the staff. They will often, however, be quite vocal to friends and family and can exert a substantial negative impact on your practice. I have left one of my favorite doctors after time and again his eleven o'clock patients were not seen until one p.m. I just did not have the time to wait two hours for each visit and although he was attentive and well skilled when he finally did see me, the burden of this wait just became too much.
We patients should expect a reasonable wait of fifteen to twenty minutes, and understand that treating patients can be complicated and difficult, but extended wait times mean that the office is not run properly and this problem is often symptomatic of other problems that may include a discourteous staff, lack of return phone calls or in the worst case problems that can result in medical malpractice.
Physicians often try to schedule an entire patient day without allowing for a break for lunch or to take and return important phone calls. This is an unreasonable way to practice and one that cannot be sustained for any extended period of time without significant breakdown in patient care and waiting times. Even if a physician has a fifteen minute lunch and uses the rest of his break time to catch up, each doctor should have at the very least a forty five minute mid-day break built into an eight hour schedule.
Front office staff should also have scheduled breaks and lunch time to avoid burn out. It is often a good idea to place the phone on service during lunch hour so that the office has a quiet time each day to recharge and enjoy a few minutes of peace. You may want to schedule your last morning session patient thirty minutes prior to lunch hour and try to save this time for a return patient rather than a new visit that may run overtime. New patient visits may be best scheduled for the first visit in the morning, right after lunch and an hour prior to the end of office hours. Back to back new patient scheduled visits will certainly contribute to longer waiting times so schedules should be built with specific new patient slots that work best for each particular office and practice style. You should, however, try to schedule new patients within twenty four hours of appointment request whenever possible. Unless your physician is the only game in town, new patients will shop around for an earlier appointment.
Should a patient become sullen and critical with the physician due to a long waiting time, the doctor should apologize for the wait and explain that certain visits may become complicated and the schedule cannot be written in stone. The staff should always be patient and courteous with those waiting to be seen and if the patient should become overly hostile, management should take charge and try to smooth out the problem rather than leaving the often already overworked front office to deal with it alone.
You are not going to satisfy each patient who visits your office, but you should make every attempt to give your patients the opportunity to be seen in a timely manner and adjust your office schedule to meet these particular needs.
You should expect that the care you will be rendered when you finally see the doctor will be unhurried and that all of your questions and treatment options will be discussed in detail. When you leave the office, you should be satisfied that you received the best treatment possible and that you are certain of any post visit instruction.
Unfortunately, many physician practices have no idea what a schedule means and chronically run behind schedule day after day. The problem here is two fold. First, if a physician is not meeting his daily schedule obligations and patients and extended waiting times are the norm, his or her schedule is almost certainly overcrowded. Every office should have a time protocol for both new patients and return visits and gauge the physicians overall practice style and adjust his schedule accordingly. In the rush to meet volume requirements, you may end up losing valuable patients along with new patients who will leave prior to their visit or never return. After only a few weeks, the front office should be aware of the practice style of each of their physicians and adjust time schedules to meet his or her method of treatment.
Secondly, the front office should note the ebb and flow of daily visits. If the physician is running two hours behind, the front office staff should call the next set of patients and ask them to arrive two hours later. Often the staff is anxious to go home for the day and would rather deal with disgruntled patients who approach the front desk to voice complaints rather than having to put in extra hours or call in alternate staff to cover the late hours.
In the worst case scenario, patients are put into a treatment room and forgotten for extended periods of time, behind a closed door without reading materials or anything else to do. Many patients will wait for ridiculous amounts of time without opening the door and checking on the doctors progress, while others will simply get dressed and exit without saying a word to the staff. They will often, however, be quite vocal to friends and family and can exert a substantial negative impact on your practice. I have left one of my favorite doctors after time and again his eleven o'clock patients were not seen until one p.m. I just did not have the time to wait two hours for each visit and although he was attentive and well skilled when he finally did see me, the burden of this wait just became too much.
We patients should expect a reasonable wait of fifteen to twenty minutes, and understand that treating patients can be complicated and difficult, but extended wait times mean that the office is not run properly and this problem is often symptomatic of other problems that may include a discourteous staff, lack of return phone calls or in the worst case problems that can result in medical malpractice.
Physicians often try to schedule an entire patient day without allowing for a break for lunch or to take and return important phone calls. This is an unreasonable way to practice and one that cannot be sustained for any extended period of time without significant breakdown in patient care and waiting times. Even if a physician has a fifteen minute lunch and uses the rest of his break time to catch up, each doctor should have at the very least a forty five minute mid-day break built into an eight hour schedule.
Front office staff should also have scheduled breaks and lunch time to avoid burn out. It is often a good idea to place the phone on service during lunch hour so that the office has a quiet time each day to recharge and enjoy a few minutes of peace. You may want to schedule your last morning session patient thirty minutes prior to lunch hour and try to save this time for a return patient rather than a new visit that may run overtime. New patient visits may be best scheduled for the first visit in the morning, right after lunch and an hour prior to the end of office hours. Back to back new patient scheduled visits will certainly contribute to longer waiting times so schedules should be built with specific new patient slots that work best for each particular office and practice style. You should, however, try to schedule new patients within twenty four hours of appointment request whenever possible. Unless your physician is the only game in town, new patients will shop around for an earlier appointment.
Should a patient become sullen and critical with the physician due to a long waiting time, the doctor should apologize for the wait and explain that certain visits may become complicated and the schedule cannot be written in stone. The staff should always be patient and courteous with those waiting to be seen and if the patient should become overly hostile, management should take charge and try to smooth out the problem rather than leaving the often already overworked front office to deal with it alone.
You are not going to satisfy each patient who visits your office, but you should make every attempt to give your patients the opportunity to be seen in a timely manner and adjust your office schedule to meet these particular needs.
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