Re:Why does it take so long to schedule a doctor's appointme...
by bombcar on Monday May 08, 2023 @10:25PM
(#35869529)
Death by paperwork is the symptoms of late-stage bureaucracy. In the early days of something, it's all fly-by-pants and everything is so good compared to the previous alternative that nobody cares, but as it gets more and more "finalized" the paperwork mounts more and more to "prevent" issues, because the issues the overload of paperwork causes aren't accounted for.
Ten patients die because there was no doctor to see them? Nothing important.
One patient sued because a doctor made a mistake that didn't even kill them? Hugely important, ten more pages of paperwork will have to be added; the paperwork won't prevent it happening again, but now it'll clearly be the doctor that is liable, not the practice/hospital/insurance company.
While it's mostly not quite as bad here in Norway, it's getting there.
Lots of GP's here are quitting because they've been overloaded by paperwork. Government wants more documentation on everything. Can't just trust "some random doctor" who's known the patient for decades to sign a few days of sick leave, nope, we need paper trail!
My SO's GP almost started crying during one of her checkups since he was so overworked. He'd have a normal day seeing people during normal working hours, then there would be at least 5-6 hours of paperwork to do. He quit half a year later.
The newly trained doctors have caught on and don't apply for open GP positions. The result is that we have a massive deficit of GPs which keeps getting worse day by day.