I have determined that doctors and their offices work on a different time schedule than any other industry except for car mechanics. Now that we’re settling into Houston Stephen and I are making appointments with Doctors and Dentists. The nice surprise is that you can get an appointment, even as a new patient, extremely quickly. Unfortunately you have to take off a half day to get through your appointment.
In order to coordinate the car and getting to our various obligations on time we’ve tried to get the first appointments of the day. Most doctors’ offices seem to open between 7:30-8:30am which in theory works out really well. Of course they want you to show up 30 minutes early to complete paperwork. This means that we’re getting up when it is still dark out to get to the place at the crack of dawn.
The bone I have to pick is that you get there on time, you fill out the paperwork and then you sit for hours waiting for the darn appointment. Last week I waited an hour to get into the exam room. Then I sat for another 30 minutes waiting for the Nurse Practitioner. After meeting with her it was another 30 minutes of sitting and waiting for the assistant to come in with the prescriptions and paperwork. At that point I’ve read every issue of ancient and soiled People magazines at least twice.
When you are the first appointment of the day how can they already be running late? Do they think that we don’t have jobs to get to? Maybe they don’t understand that you need the job to get the insurance to pay for the visit.
