Some medical office practices are terrible!

[dukie41181]

I am so irritated right now! I just called to rescheduled a well check appt. for my 6 month old daughter. She recently began taking consistent naps and the appt. happens to be during nap time (and we all know what happens if we miss nap time)! Figures!

Well, I called and they were booked solid for the next MONTH. Nothing in the afternoon with our Dr. So I asked when the next afternoon availability would be and they said they don't have her schedule for October and I'd have to call bad Mid-Sept. because it fills up quickly. Are you f*ckin' serious?! So there are no appts. available because the Dr. is booked solid but you have nothing to even offer to paitents!? Thats just crazy to me! So I guess I'll be calling at some random time in Sept. hoping that there are still appts. for October. Just ridiculous IMHO!

And really, I will just take her tomorrow but it surely won't be pretty. I will feel for my daughter who is having to strech her nap (which is hugely important in our house) and I won't feel bad when she is crying.

SOOOOOOOO IRRITATED AND FRUSTRATED!

:irked:

[egoldber]

I feel your pain. I love my peds, but if I want to see a particular doctor (vs any of them or a PA), I have to call on THE day that they open the books for the next 6 weeks. So now I am just in the habit of calling every Monday starting about 8 weeks in advance to ask when they will open the books for the timeframe I want.

[hobie]

If you do go in, I'd be sure to tell your DR about the appt scheduling issue. She may not be aware of the problem.

[maylips]

I feel for you. How are you supposed to know when you book the next appointment with a newborn what his/her schedule will be like by the next appointment?!?!

My other pet peeve is going in for a well appointment and then having to sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes because they are running late, making your well child hang out with a bunch of sick kids. ESPECIALLY when they're really young and you're dealing with working in the appointment between naps and feedings. Doesn't make for a pleasant experience for mommy.

[AnnieW625]

I had that problem with my medical office before we had Kaiser. It used to drive me nuts, but I got used to it.

[Andi98989]

I have a friend who just had a baby. A few months before her due date, she found a pediatrician to use and they were accepting new patients under her insurance. They told her that when she had the baby, just to call and let them know and they'd set up her first appointment. She gets home from the hosptial with the baby and calls them, and they say they're no longer taking patients under her insurance! So she had to scramble and find a new ped to use.

[hellokitty]

We have the same exact issue with our ped practice too. To top it off, well baby visits are scheduled, BUT do not officially have a slot. They just, "squeeze" them in, in btwn other appts. Nice. This explains why we have had to wait over an hr (not including wt time in the exam room) just to see the doctor. Worse yet, they will not let you take TWO children in for well visits at the same time. That one really pissed me off. I told the secretary that I would have to take BOTH kids with me to BOTH appts, if I had to set them seperately anyway... so why not just get it over with??? She wouldn't even let me do it when I told her my DH would be coming with me. I finally got annoyed and just told her I didn't care what their policy was, we were going to get both well-child visits over with at the same time, with the two kids and my DH and I both present. She let me do it, but let me know that she was very unhappy about it (oh well, I don't really care what she thinks).

I swear, some of the receptionists are like robots. They can be so inflexible and heaven forbid, you don't just take the first appt they throw out to you, they have to starting sighing and making it sound as if you are causing them so much inconvenience to DO THEIR JOB and to freaking flip through a computer screen to look at the schedule... like that is soooo hard! I like the particular doctor that we go to in the practice, but I CANNOT stand his staff. I even had a receptionist, who got on my case about how, "late" I was with our well child visits, when the problem was basically that they were also so booked, with every well child visit would be late and then when that keeps happened, then yeah, it's not so far fetched that we're not 6 mo off from our well child schedule, b/c of the staff scheduling us that way. I can't believe she had the nerve to chastize me about it, so I basically shot back that it wasn't my fault, but THEIR fault, b/c they were always so booked, they would keep pushing our appts back and it just compiled. She didn't say anything as a retort when I said that.

[dukie41181]

To top it all off I got a call back from the receptionist (5 hours later!) and she informed me that we no longer had our appointment tomorrow morning as she'd given the appt. time to another patient after our conversation!
:angry-smiley-005:

I was livid! She had the nerve to tell me that we'd talked about it and I said "there was absolutely no way we could make the appointment" and that NEVER happened. I was ticked and demanded to speak with someone else about the issue. I talked with another lady (who was far nicer!) and explained to her the situation. She told me that they were calling patients with well-child visits to reschedule anyways so I wouldn't have gotten an appointment anyways (not sure if this was true or a line of crap, to be honest but I gave the nice lady the benefit of the doubt) and needed to reschedule. I explained to her that I was unwilling to not be seen until October. She immediately spoke with the Dr. and our Dr. is going to come in one afternoon specifically for our appointment.

We really like our Dr. and thought it was very considerate of her to go out of her way for us. We just dislike her support staff. From others that also go to her office, they feel the same way about her support staff.

[gatorsmom]

I can't believe some of the stories here! Just unbelievable. I"m sorry you have to go through that.

I just wanted to chime in that I hate our ped's policy of not scheduling wellbaby appointments until weeks later. If I want the twins in for their 2 year appointment, I'll have to call a month to 5 weeks early. HOWEVER, I love that if my children are sick, they can get me in to see the doctor that day. And the doctors understand when I bring in all my children. The doctor will even check all the children I bring in with me if the others are showing some early symptoms. Our ped practice is awesome. From all the stories here I guess we got lucky.