Family Doctors

It seems to me that the family doctors have us by the balls and they dictate the kind of service they give us and we don’t complain too loudly. Here are a few of my thoughts based on my experiences.

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Family Doctors

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When l go into the see the Family Doctor, I make an appointment to see him or her at a specific time and date. Because I have always been “an on time guy”, I always get there about ten minutes early. Nearly every time, they hand me a hand full of forms and tell me to fill them out. Since I’m usually not feeling too good when I go to see the doctor, I tell them I filled those out last time I was here. They tell me that they have changed their accounting procedures and I need to fill out the new forms. I ask why they change their accounting procedures every six weeks and they ignore me. I fill out the forms in about ten minutes and they tell me to have a seat. About an hour after the time of my scheduled appointment, they call me from the waiting lobby and weigh me and put me in a back room and take my pulse and blood pressure. They tell me the Doctor will be in shortly to see me. In 45 minutes to an hour in the boring little room, the Doctor comes in and spends 10 minutes with me and leaves after telling me I’m being referred to a specialist for my problem leaving me wondering why I didn’t go to the specialist in the first place. So I’ve spent 2 1/2 hours of my time and $150 of my money for a referral that I could have avoided by going to a specialist in the first place.

It seems to me that most businesses would go bankrupt in a very short period of time if they ran their offices the way the family doctors do today. When I was an engineer and I scheduled a meeting with a contractor or customer, I was there on time and our meeting started as scheduled. Why do Doctors treat their customers with such disrespect and why do you have to fill out forms with the same information you’ve given them at least 10 separate times? This has been a source of aggravation for me for many years, but the system never changes. I guess doctors don’t participate in “Quality Programs” to try improve the product they give their customers. It seems to me the service has gotten worse and worse and their fees have gotten higher and higher as I have aged. Like I said, no other business would survive with a service product and record like this? Why do we continue to tolerate it? The only reason I can think of is that when we go to see them. we are usually sick and are desperate to get some help to feel better. Otherwise, we would not tolerate the kind of treatment we receive. I guess there’s not a whole lot we can do about it?

I’m feeling like crap, I’m afraid I’ll have to go see the doctor and get treated like crap again.

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Thanks for reading Family Doctors,

Bill