During an average doctor visit, more than half of all patients spend at least twenty minutes in the waiting room and another fifteen minutes (or more) in the exam room before seeing the doctor. When waiting times are too long, some patients may expect the doctor to reimburse them for their time, or at the very least, not expect them to pay for the visit.
For example a sales executive schedules a 2pm appointment with his doctor for a sore throat. He has a 4pm customer meeting that same afternoon to close a multi-million dollar deal. The sales executive knows that the customer is a stickler for punctuality, but since the customer's office is only a five-minute walk from his doctor's office, he is comfortable with the appointment time. The sales executive arrives twenty minutes late to his doctor appointment, pays his insurance co-payment, and is advised by the receptionist that his doctor is the only doctor available that day and therefore he is behind schedule.
Patient Recognition Month Poster
A patient having his blood pressure taken by a phy...
Yale School of MedicineHe waits in the doctor's office waiting room for seventy-five minutes. In the exam room, the sales executive checks the time on his cell phone and sees that he has waited another twenty minutes. His doctor arrives, examines him, and performs a throat culture. His doctor leaves and the sales executive waits in the exam room an additional twenty minutes for the results. His doctor returns with the negative results of the throat culture, and the sales executive asks the doctor to check his left shoulder, which has been bothering him. The doctor, aware that he is already behind schedule, spends another twenty minutes examining his shoulder and writes him a prescription for a mild painkiller. The sales executive leaves the doctor's office at 5pm. He calls the customer who, is aggravated, and tells...