MidAmerica Orthopaedics

This letter I’m sending the doctor today should give you a pretty good idea of what I think of this place:
«Yesterday my husband had an appointment at 3:40 p.m. with you to get a cast put on his recently broken wrist. When we walked into your office, we knew that we were in for a long wait given that the waiting room was so full there were not even chairs enough for both of us to sit, but we hoped for the best.
Come an hour after our appointment time, we still had not been seen and the waiting room had seen very little movement. I heard the receptionist speaking in Spanish to another patient, and could discern enough to know she was asking if the patient could come back tomorrow. That was when I knew there was probably no hope of being seen anytime soon. So we asked the receptionist how many people were ahead of my husband, and she politely told us that there were three or four ahead of us, confirming my suspicion. The receptionist asked us if we would like to schedule him another appointment the next day, but we, of course, declined. We grabbed his forms and walked out. After all, why would we come back to risk another day of sitting around without being seen?
The epidemic of doctors’ offices running late has almost become the norm, and I regularly expect to wait around thirty minutes to be taken back to a room. This expectation being the norm is in and of itself a real problem, but what your office did to us is outrageously disrespectful. Had we actually waited around to see you, given the flow (or lack thereof) of the waiting room, I seriously question whether we would have even been seen two hours after his scheduled appointment.
Like you, most of us have jobs, and in order to come to the doctor we take time away from those jobs or just end up having to allocate time later in the evening that would otherwise be spent with family to catch up on missed time for jobs that are not your regular „9 to 5.“ Beyond the fact that we may be missing work to see you, our time is otherwise valuable, and certainly no less valuable than yours.
I understand emergencies come up in practicing medicine, and while I cannot necessarily think of any that would come up in ortho I’m sure they happen. But regardless, keeping us waiting as long as you did is likely not a product of emergencies, but simply poor planning and overbooking.
I hope as you move forward you will consider the value of your patients’ time and practice better time management. At the very least, you could consider asking the receptionist to let patients know that there is a large delay so that they could simply come later rather than waiting around.»