Abstract
Keywords: Patients’ rights, empowered patients, ethics, patient engagement, office visits, wait times.
Citation: Wible PL. Waiting room remedy: doctor pays for delays (the doctor’s perspective). J Participat Med. 2012 Jan 11; 4:e1.
Published: January 11, 2012.
Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.
When Dr. Timothy Malia of Fairport, New York, runs behind schedule, he passes out five-dollar bills to everyone in the waiting room. And when Dr. Cyrus Peikari of Dallas, Texas canceled his appointments for a family emergency, he gave each patient 50 bucks for the inconvenience.
Most doctors apologize. Few offer cash. Others get creative: Dr. Gwen Hanson of Bellevue, Washington gives out Starbucks cards; Dr. Sharon McCoy George of Irvine, California, doles out movie passes; and I award gifts from a giant wicker basket by the door.
As America inches toward patient-centered care, some doctors are leading the way.
I transitioned from assembly-line to patient-centered medicine in 2004 when I invited citizens in Lane County, Oregon, to design their own clinic. I led town hall meetings, collected 100 pages of testimony, adopted 90% of the community’s feedback, and opened one month later. Our community clinic is thriving. But I’m always looking for new ideas.
Who Is Accountable for Wait Time?
Then my friend Elaine disclosed, “If I’m kept waiting, I bill the doctor. At the 20-minute mark, I politely tell the receptionist that the doctor has missed my appointment and at the 30-minute mark I will start billing at $47.00 per hour.” More often than not, she gets paid.
I reported her story on my YouTube news channel where it was picked up by CNN and over 11,000 other media outlets. Ultimately, Elaine’s waiting room remedy became the lead segment for a “Patients’ Bill of Rights” series on ABC World News.
Why all the fuss? Patients, frustrated by excessive waiting, have had no immediate recourse. Until now.
Amid the media frenzy, I met up with a patient named Pam. She billed two chiropractors and a neurosurgeon. The neurosurgeon waived her balance; both chiropractors paid up. One offered a bottle of wine from his private collection and promised prompt service upon arrival for future appointments — ahead of scheduled patients — because, he said, “those people don’t mind waiting.”
Comments from news stories confirm Elaine and Pam aren’t unique. Jacob Raitt, a retired pharmacologist, writes:
“Hurrah: I began to do that in 1968 when I had to take my infant daughter to a dermatologist. I called early, told the person who answered that my daughter had diaper rash and how I was treating her. We arrived at the office 15 minutes early, waited more than three hours, and when the doctor finally made her presence known she told me that my daughter had diaper rash, and wrote a prescription for the medication I had told them I was using. When I went home, I immediately invoiced the doctor for $75.00, ignored her bill, and compounded interest monthly. When my bill to her exceeded $100.00 I started action in small claims court. She paid me, and ever since I have always told doctors what I would do if kept waiting more than 15 minutes. Other than in cases of emergency, I have never been kept waiting.[1]”
From Anger to Empathy
We’ve all waited for the doctor. But why so long? Here’s the not-so-simple answer:
Physicians cannot set, charge, or receive proper payment because government and insurance companies control reimbursement. In other words, there’s no free market for physicians who accept insurance. By boosting the volume of patients seen, they buffer the loss from low reimbursement, resulting in production-driven practices that pack up to five exam rooms per doctor to cover ever-increasing overhead.
When physicians enter the exam room, they have no idea what multitude or complexity of problems they’ll encounter, nor the insurance hassles, paperwork, and phone calls they must endure to adequately care for the patient.
Patients believe doctors are insulated from economic distress. Yet with high medical school debt, low reimbursement, and 24/7 call duty, some physicians earn less than minimum wage. I know doctors who can’t afford their own health insurance; fortunately, their kids meet federal poverty guidelines and are enrolled in Medicaid. Recently, a physician friend confided she’s defaulting on her student loans.
For the promise of loan repayment, some doctors take government jobs with no control over their schedules. Myria Emeny, MD wrote in an email (June 2011): “When I worked for the community health center it was mandatory that a patient be put in every 15 minutes — didn’t matter if they needed an interpreter or were elderly and very sick or disabled and needed extra explanations — didn’t matter. Patients waited for me two or more hours … I worked through lunch and continued past the time my nurse left.” After years of self-neglect from working inhumane schedules, doctors burn out.
Doctors Taking Responsibility: Victims No More
In our automated and alienated medical system, both patients and doctors feel dehumanized and commoditized. Will invoicing doctors solve the problem?
While it’s easy to blame doctors, patients bear some responsibility. One person writes: “Wait time too long? Leave. Can’t leave? Then stay. Your doctor is running late but can’t bend time. And frankly, if you show up for an appointment still fat, smoking, and not taking your meds, then you’re wasting their time, and everyone else’s time in the waiting room. Maybe they should send you a bill.[2]”
In fact, the underlying issue is: We all must be responsible for our actions — and inactions. A patient named Colin challenges, “I have negative hope that lawyers and politicians in DC have the capacity to fix any one of the thousand problems with health care if physicians cannot come to a consensus on a ‘simple’ issue of should physicians bear responsibility for running late.[3]”
One physician admits, “At my old job I was routinely scheduled to have three patients in the 8:30 am time slot. There’s no way I could finish seeing all those people before the next three scheduled in the 8:45 am time slot.[4]” A patient contends, “The fact that you have to see [12] people an hour because the insurance companies are screwing you doesn’t change that fact that long waits waste our time.[5]” The truth is: when both patient and physician sign contracts with insurers, both carry equal responsibility.
But physicians are more capable of fixing long waits than patients. As the business owner (or employee agreeing to work for a group), physicians consent to the creation of this situation and should be challenged to take responsibility for it.
Dr. Timothy Malia took control of his medical practice by lowering volume and working a humane schedule. He says, “I do what I can in the part of the world I have some control over, most often just the 10 feet around me.” Imagine if we all did the same.
Informed Scheduling
One solution: Offices must clearly inform patients what to expect before they arrive for an appointment. With open-hours scheduling, patients sign in and are treated on a first-come, first-served basis. With wave scheduling, patients are booked at the top of the hour and seen in order of arrival. Most common is stream scheduling — assigning one time slot per person, with overbooking for same-day appointments.
Uninformed patients are often in for unpleasant surprises. After a long wait, one patient confides, “I started asking people what time their appointment was for and it turned out there were four of us with the same appointment time. I switched doctors.[6]”
While informed scheduling may seem to be a simple fix, it’s also a threat to standard operations, as many practices maximize efficiency and benefit financially by having people wait for free.
Just a Little Respect Between Doctors and Patients
Most physicians are compassionate and caring. But one woman recalls waiting in the exam room for almost two hours while her doctor was “calling all his friends on the phone and telling them about his fabulous Florida deep-sea fishing trip![7]”
It’s basic: mutual respect is a prerequisite for a healing relationship.
José, a physician, shares a personal anecdote. Pulled over by a police officer on the way to the doctor’s office, José’s uncle was five minutes late for his appointment. The administrator told him it didn’t matter why he was late and to expect a bill for not showing up on time or canceling within 24 hours. He rescheduled for the following day and waited two hours in the exam room for the doctor. No apologies were made. José summarizes, “This lack of respect is what gives many of us a bad name, making patients feel like we think we are superior to them and think that our time is more valuable than theirs, alienating us from our patients.[8]”
Doctors have hundreds of reasons why they run behind and claim it’s never due to lack of respect for patients. Yet many offices charge patients late, no-show, or cancel fees, while physicians miss appointments with no reciprocal financial obligation to patients. The assumption: patients don’t have as legitimate a reason for tardiness or missing appointments as physicians.
From Paternalism to Partnership
Some believe waiting for doctors is a fact of life. Not so. Whether physician or patient, here are five ways to avoid delays at the doctor’s office:
- Schedule smartly. While physicians should select the scheduling method that works best for their workflow, patients should be offered informed consent when it comes to scheduling. Choose offices that allow reasonable time intervals for appointments.
- Communicate clearly. Whether by mouth, text, or tweet, clinics must inform patients of delays. And patients should state the real reason for their appointment at the beginning of the visit.
- Practice mutual respect. Patients: be on time, on task, and compliant with agreed upon treatment plans from previous visits to prevent schedule delays for other patients.
- End the double standard. If offices charge patients no-show, cancelation, or late fees, patients have a right to invoice doctors who miss their appointments.
- Vote with your feet. Physicians and patients have choices. Dislike how you are treated at a medical clinic? Find another clinic. Fed up with insurance? Bypass third parties with cash. All across America, doctors are using their energy, creativity, and love of medicine to create medical sanctuaries for patients. Celebrate what works.
References
- Raitt JR [comment]. In: Fiore K. Time is money and some doctors are paying the price. MedPage Today. July 7, 2011. Available at: http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/GeneralProfessionalIssues/27444. Accessed July 8, 2011. ↩
- Anonymous [comment]. In: Cohen E. Would your doctor pay for wasted time? CNN.com. June 30, 2011. Available at: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/30/time.worth.money.cohen/index.html?hpt=he_c1. Accessed June 30, 2011. ↩
- Anonymous [comment]. In: Wible P. Patients who bill their doctor for being late. KevinMD.com. July 6, 2011. Available at: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/07/patients-bill-doctor-late.html#more-54818. Accessed July 6, 2011. ↩
- Anonymous [comment]. In: Cohen E. Would your doctor pay for wasted time? CNN.com. June 30, 2011. Available at: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/30/time.worth.money.cohen/index.html?hpt=he_c1. Accessed June 30, 2011. ↩
- Anonymous [comment]. In: Cohen E. Would your doctor pay for wasted time? CNN.com. June 30, 2011. Available at: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/30/time.worth.money.cohen/index.html?hpt=he_c1. Accessed June 30, 2011. ↩
- Anonymous [comment]. In: Cohen E. Would your doctor pay for wasted time? CNN.com. June 30, 2011. Available at: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/30/time.worth.money.cohen/index.html?hpt=he_c1. Accessed June 30, 2011. ↩
Copyright: © 2012 Pamela L. Wible. Published here under license by The Journal of Participatory Medicine. Copyright for this article is retained by the author, with first publication rights granted to the Journal of Participatory Medicine. All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. By virtue of their appearance in this open-access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.
Great article and in-depth look into the waiting room conundrum with doctors and patients. One thing I feel is missed is a discussion on specialists, or those top doctors whom sometimes I am willing to wait for. Do they do better at managing time? Or do they just as poorly manage their time? Mayo Clinic, how do they do? In some offices I have noticed monitors that politely tell how on time your doctor is running.
Doctors are not victims. They ceded control of billing and best practices long ago to insurance companies because it was convenient. The AMA’s main/only concern was to lower costs of malpractice insurance. There have been no substantive advance in IT beyond the insurance/physician billing link because physicians receive no direct financial benefit — educated patients are a waste of time — and it promotes transparency in the profession. The false shortage of physicians can be remedied by increasing medical school admissions.
For physicians to blame compensation systems, etc. is like citizens placing sole blame on Wall Street for the mortgage meltdown.
The best way to change standard physician practices like long waits, institutional inaccessibility of patient records, etc. is through Yelp! Ironic, while they pull in the big bucks, they object to free market principles.
Doctors and yelp? Doctors are not a Burger King and last time I checked not all the patients we see are quick 15 min visits but complicated 10 issues that it might take 15 mins to just review their last hospital stay. Overall doctors are under compensated and your statement ofvyelp just tells me how ignorant you really are! I challenge you for one day to shadow me at my office like I did to one patient thAt had a similar remark. I have not had 1 lunch break while working 13 hrs days the last 2 years. Some insurance reimbursements of $40 for office visits are a joke. $40 maybe to see a nurse or PA but a doctor? The bottom line is that with low reimbursements doctors need to see volumes of patients to break even… But even with the fecal pay, I save lives and and a yelper can’t.
I am a Psychiatrist working in Mumbai, India. I am working since 2003, mostly in private practice.
I started with the commitment NEVER to waste my patient’s time and always worked on appointments. I religiously booked one slot for one patient, I arrived on time and always communicated about arriving late.I rescheduled patients who came later than 15 minutes after scheduled time. I divide my work-day into sessions. I have restricted the total number of patients seen in each session, so I can take a break to catch up with my work or see emergencies (or simply relax).I have charged for one missed appointment if the patient misses two consecutive appointments and only if he shows up the third time. About once in 5-6 days I was unable to manage my time, and my patients had to wait for more than an hour.
More than half of my new patients never showed up; I had to call them to check if they were coming- half of these had kept their phones switched off. 50% of my patients arrived 10 minutes late. While 10-15% arrived upto 20-30 (even 90 minutes) late. 15-20% of my patients arrived on or before time and told me in advance if they were not coming. Almost 90% patients kept calling me when I was driving to work to enquire if I would be arriving/ to ascertain clinic address, fees, etc, so I have to always leave home half an hour early. I do have a secretary and patients do have the clinic number, but they insist on phoning me only.
So I spend more than half my time waiting for patients, scheduling appointments which are never honored. I am losing money, I feel frustrated sitting twiddling my thumbs and one patient even abusively said that I “deserve to have such a thin crowd.” Fact is: I am under severe time-pressure to finish work and my appointments need lot of advance booking- but most of that scheduling is going to waste.
As I am a working mother, I need to be sure exactly when I will be finishing work. That’s one major reason I have continued this system for so many years. But I am deeply unhappy about the wasted time. I wonder when I will able to do proper justice to my time and education.
I believe in the mid-1980s or maybe it was mid-1990s, California passed a law that if doctors implement a fee for missed or cancelled appts within 24 hours, then the doctor must state that this is reciprocal if they cancel within 24 hours.