Funny
Like any other business a doctor office needs to generate a certain amount per hour to pay expenses and salaries. That’s the starting point in this equation. Of course doctors may be greedy and trying to milk every available dollar. But let’s assume a practice were the doctor is making an average salary for his field.
In order for things to run smoothly the following needs to happen
1) the doctor doesn’t overbook, rather he leaves enough time per patient . This is difficult to guess but doable.
2) every patient shows up on time (or early to fill out paperwork)
3) if a patient doesn’t show on time then the doctor needs to make a decision, reschedule the patient or allow the schedule to start to get backed up . Ideally the patient would be rescheduled but the patient would…
4) ability to charge patients for missed or late shows. With dedicated appointment slots comes the need for definite revenue . Otherwise several missed appointments and the dollar per hour is in the negative range.
It all comes down to insurance. Low reimbursement means a need for high volume in general. The worst Is a Medicaid practice, besides for low reimbursement,doctors can’t charge for missed appointments . And when patients have no skin in the game they have no incentive to not show so multiple cancellations is the norm and thus overbooking by doctors is the norm.
I’m not saying doctors can’t do a better job. I’ve left doctors for being bad about wait times. I’m saying that a lot of this rests on pt insurance and pt irresponsibility.
Like in all other areas of life , those that are on time end up having to wait for those that have no concept of time.
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