My psych often has people wait for their appointments. I’ll be scheduled for 800, there at 740, get seen at 840.
And you know what? That’s perfectly fine. I feel taken seriously, he listens, he asks, he quips, he shares his own experiences, he does all he can to make me comfortable telling him about the shit going on in my head. I’ll work up the courage to tell him something I find hard to phrase and unpleasant to talk about and he takes it with a relaxed professionalism, waiting patiently for me to finish, asks questions (usually very precise ones, both unpleasant in how close to home they hit and reassuring in the implications that I’m not the only one with these issues) and looks for the best way to help me.
So when I sit in that waiting room, watching the minutes tick by, I imagine he’s taking the same time with a different, far more difficult patient. Perhaps someone got slotted in for an emergency, perhaps someone needs blood drawn for a routine check and really, really hates needles, perhaps someone is having a breakdown… I don’t know and I don’t care what ails the other patients, but I know that I want them to receive the same quality of care as I do. To me, that’s worth waiting for.
There’s a movement inside of Healthcare to get the average Dr’s office humming like a dentist. Which, if you’re concerned with patient care at all, is impossible. You’ll see it with posters saying only one issue per visit, which also greatly imperils the patient as sometimes a diagnosis will change based off one symptom. You’ve got a good attitude about this. Please share it
This is the product of clinics being owned by corporations chasing a specific return, and not being owned by a local group of physicians who actually want to care for people.
Shop local applies.
We get the same issue in Ontario with family health teams. The structure of the corporation matters, but so does the funding model
Sometimes I wonder though if it’s because drs get to bill OHIP per visit as well so if you try to squeeze more than one complaint in in a visit then they only get to bill once.
That is what I meant by the funding model. What we’re talking about is fee for service. More service equals more money. There’s other funding models though.
