My wife got this message from a doctor’s clinic: “Your appointment is at 6.30pm. The doctor will come between 7pm to 7.30pm.”
An appointment preceding the doctor’s arrival? How does that work?
Ah, clearly, I don’t know the ropes in the medical treatment business.
Simple - this is the drill:
- Clinic opens at 6pm.
- Appointments are allotted at 5-minute intervals – 6.00, 6.05, 6.10 and so on.
- The doctor starts seeing patients from about 7.45pm.
- Say, five - seven minutes per patient, and, hence, your turn (6.30 appointment) will come around 8.15pm - 8.30pm.
So, why not give an appointment at 8.15pm?
Don’t be silly! What if the doctor does arrive at 7.15pm, finishes seeing the 6.00-6.25 patients by 7.45pm and is ready for you, but you have not arrived yet?
The doctor’s time will be wasted. That is NOT acceptable.
It doesn’t matter one bit that every patient will be waiting for at least one – one and a half hours, resulting in a total of 15-20 patient-hours, and even more if some patients arrive with a companion.
The patient’s time has zero value.
Besides, why do you think (s)he is called “patient”? Patients have to live up to their name and remain patient while they wait for the doctor.
This system of appointment timings is almost universal amongst doctors, at least in Kolkata.
Fortunately, this clinic was humane enough to set appointments at five-minute intervals.
At one clinic, I got an appointment time of 10.04am. Very strange, I thought. What an odd time!
On enquiry, I found that the norm here was one-minute intervals – 10.00, 10.01, 10.02, etc.
Another clinic doesn’t bother with intervals. Every patient would have the same appointment time – 10.00. Of course, the doctor’s estimated time of arrival (ETA) would be in the region of 11.00 - 11.30, depending on what he had for breakfast and whether it agreed with him.
Question arises – if everyone has the same appointment time, who gets to see the doctor first?
Now comes the role of the great Bengali art, skill and science – how to create work when none is needed!
The receptionist expects you to report at the desk when you arrive, whereupon (s)he notes down the names in the order of arrival. Why not a sequential system of appointments with timings spaced out? Ah, that would eliminate the creation of work – writing down names.
Occasionally, errors occur and discord follows.
For example, Mr C arrives to find that the receptionist has “gone for tea”. He sits down to wait. Mr D arrives next but waits at the receptionist’s desk instead of sitting down. Consequently, when the receptionist returns, Mr D is ahead of Mr C on the list.
Mr C is not happy!
Talking of receptionists, I have come to intensely dislike the reception counters at hospitals and large clinics because this is what I usually find:
- Four - six people sit behind the counter, but only one is operative at any given time.
- The others are 'busy' - on the phone, staring at a computer monitor, or simply listening to the conversation between the operative person and a patient.
- From time to time, the operative person will get up and leave for no discernible reason, and there will be a lull in proceedings before someone else takes over.
Overall, not a customer-friendly atmosphere at all.
But all is not lost. My wife showed how.
She had booked an appointment with a doctor at his chamber in a leading private hospital. When she reached the hospital, she found a number of people already waiting, but no sign of the doctor. After waiting half an hour, she asked the receptionist when the doctor was expected. After half an hour was the reply.
My wife lost it. She cancelled her appointment, demanded her money back (she got it) and stormed out. Upon reaching home, she wrote a scathing complaint to the hospital’s national website.
It worked.
She got an apology and a coupon for half the fee she had paid earlier, plus a confirmation that the hospital would refund the pre-paid fee, as well as give a coupon if in future she had to wait more than 30 minutes past her scheduled appointment time.
Moreover, when she visited the hospital next to meet another doctor, the reception staff recognised her and promoted her in the queue for the doctor, so that she met the doctor just five minutes after the scheduled time.
Alas, this doesn’t work in most places.
Doctors seem to think that there will be no dearth of patients, and if someone was not prepared to wait, (s)he can...
Actually, IMHO (in my humble opinion), doctors think too much of themselves. They feel that they 'save lives'.
Yes, admittedly, a few do.
But most doctors have a firm eye on the bottom line, which leads to unnecessary tests and expensive treatments. This is nothing but extortion which is always successful because people are scared when their health is in question.
It is time that doctors begin to regard themselves as ‘service-providers’, like lawyers, architects or contractors, who are paid to perform a particular function.
Too harsh, am I?
I remember that Dr BC Roy, who was the chief minister (CM) of West Bengal when I was a kid, used to see patients for free, for one hour every day, at his clinic.
Do we see any doctor doing this nowadays? Hardly any. The rest of them are too busy making money.
I don’t grudge anyone earning money, but at least respect us as people whose time has value, and don’t make us wait when there is no need.
Do you agree, dear reader?
(Deserting engineering after a year in a factory, Amitabha Banerjee did an MBA in the US and returned to India. Choosing work-to-live over live-to-work, he joined banking and worked for various banks in India and the Middle East. Post-retirement, he returned to his hometown Kolkata and is now spending his golden years travelling the world, playing bridge, befriending Netflix & Prime Video and writing in his wife’s travel blog.)
All have raised greivances but no solution.
Do we not face a situation much more worse in the government offices, courts etc.
The only solution is to be humble, humane and faithful to their duty which in our country is unimaginable given the present set of rulers both, in-power and opposition and the unwilling and weak judiciary.
Doctors spend a fortune getting a seat in a medical college. Are they not entitled to recover that 'Cost' and earn more?