Me: 30 minutes past my appointment (after arriving 20 minutes early) watching people walk in then get called back within 3 minutes. Fuck doctors offices so much.
Update: Nurse took me to the room. Answered prelim questions then she left. Still waiting for the doctor 20 minutes later. It is now 40 minutes past my appointment time and no sign of the person taking my money.
The doctors that are late to the appointment are late because they are taking the extra time to listen to and treat their patients. Private equity firms have standardized back to back appointments of 15 minutes for every patient, and enforce that every slot be filled. It is not possible to provide adequate healthcare in that timeframe. Every good doctor I’ve worked with is always on time to the first appointment, and later and later as the day goes on. Every scum bag doctor I’ve worked with was on time to every appointment, and never really treated a single patient. Be mad at private equity, not the doctors doing a good job.
If you were right about this, most every doctor I’ve seen is good. They definitely aren’t though. The reverse has been true in my experience. One doctor had me wait 2 hours past the appointment time, then, shocker, wasted a lot more of my time and money, and my problem was never addressed. He never even seemed to understand what the problem was (and he should have, I explained it several times). He referred me to a doctor that was literally in the process of retiring and said he told the referring doctor this. The story gets even longer but suffice it to say I wasted thousands of dollars and several hours for nothing. And this was consistent with my experience other places too. Unreasonable wait times have occurred alongside really terrible doctors for me.
Why even work with private equity then?
Why is it so hard for a group of doctors to set up their own practice?
Private Equity takes care of all the legwork; rent, admin, staff, patient flow. Not that groups can’t do this, it’s outsourced so that they can see more patients and bill more, ironically reducing patient care because profit.
Trex nailed it in their reply. And doctors do set up their own practices-- and every successful practice has been bought out.
True story… I used to go to a fairly large physician owned clinic network. They sold out to optum. Now care gets worse every year. Luigi, you listening buddy?