This has been happening a lot of late. It seems to be the new thing. You call to make an appointment somewhere, say your child's doctor's office or the endodontist or any other medical office. You ask when they can get you in, they tell you something along the lines of, "would Tuesday at 10:45 work?" You check your calendar to see if you have availability then and if there's enough time to get to their office and then you tell them that yes, you can make that appointment.
Then, they tell you you have to be there before then. There are two scenarios I've encountered that seem to happen. First, for my children's pediatrician's office, you make an appointment for time X. But you are required to be there fifteen minutes before time X. If you haven't arrived at that point, they will cancel your appointment and possibly charge you for the visit.
The second scenario is if you're a new patient. I have an elbow problem that needs to be addressed because the pain is significant enough that it's waking me up at night. I'm not a new patient at this particular orthopedic office, but this is a new issue. The appointment scheduler said to me, "can you make 9:45 on Thursday?" I said, "yes, I have a meeting that ends at 9:30, I can make that. She said, "did you say 9:30? That won't be enough time." I told her that I would be only five minutes away from their office and should have no problem getting there for the appointment.
That's when she told me that since this was a new issue I was being seen for, I would need to arrive fifteen to twenty minutes early in order to fill out new paperwork. And I am completely fine with that. But she spoke to me at length about my reason for needing the appointment and knew I was a prior patient with their office. This was before she gave me any scheduling options. She didn't tell me the effective time of my appointment (otherwise known as arrival time) until I had checked my calendar to see if the time slot worked.
It's added a layer of confusion. For my children's wellness appointments, which happen rather regularly, I put the "arrival time," which is fifteen minutes prior to the appointment onmy calendar. When they call to confirm, they make a big deal of the appointment time and warn me that I have to arrive early.
I'm guessing this new, more confusing scheduling is due to two things: First, people were arriving late and any time a medical office gets behind, late patients don't help the problem. The second reason could be that customer satisfaction is in large part tied to wait times. That fifteen minutes may have been added in all along, but we just thought we were having to wait in their lobby and they were behind. When we're called back five minutes past our appointment time with this new system, they're only five minutes late, not twenty. From a psychological perspective, this may make a big difference to many people.
I'm an on-time person. I keep a calendar. And even if I didn't, the email and voice mail reminders that are offered by all medical offices these days make it hard to miss an appointment accidentally. I'm hate that these types of scheduling things have become necessary.
The Big Boy Update: Three-years-old today. He had a good day. It was fairly quiet with his party happening on Saturday. We were very happy to have his Aunt Rebecca and cousin Olivia to open their gift and some presents he got via mail. Then we sang the birthday song and ate cake with him.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "I want to ride to town." My daughter knows Mimi's leg, when she's sitting down, is the "pony". Mimi gives her rides on the pony a lot. Aunt Rebecca's legs however, have another name. Her aunt puts my daughter on top of her knees and bounces her up and down saying, "Riding on the pony, riding to town, riding on the pony, don't fall down!" My daughter came up to her this afternoon, looked at her legs and said, "I want to ride to town."
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