Why does it take so long to schedule a doctor's appointment in the US?

Re:Why does it take so long to schedule a doctor's appointme... by bookofjoe on Monday May 08, 2023 @09:20PM (#35869122)

You must be psychic. I'll be 75 on June 8 of this year, and it occurred to me that scheduling old people for appointments a year and a half way is a frictionless way of keeping a full schedule that will only get lighter as geezers like me drop dead before we can be seen. Oh well...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why does it take so long to schedule a doctor's appointme... by metadat on Monday May 08, 2023 @09:35PM (#35869218)

Not psychic at all, unfortunately! I just upvote you a lot and keep and eye out for your (nearly always thought provoking) posts. IIRC, you said in the past you're a retired M.D., is that right?

If you live around the bay area, I'd love to buy you lunch sometime. You are indisputably a super interesting person, @bookofjoe! Email in profile, promise I'm pretty cool as far as humans go :p

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why does it take so long to schedule a doctor's appointme... by bookofjoe on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @04:04PM (#35879688)

Thanks for your kind words. Yes, I'm a retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist (38 years: 1977-2015).

I lived in LA from 1966-1983, when I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where I've remained.

I'm easy to connect with: [email protected]

When I'm not acting out on HN, I do so in these arenas:

https://www.bookofjoe.com/ (since August 2004) https://www.youtube.com/user/bookofjoe (since March 2006) https://twitter.com/bookofjoe (since November 2006)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why does it take so long to schedule a doctor's appointme... by bombcar on Monday May 08, 2023 @10:21PM (#35869509)

Reminds me of this little-known Seuss book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHyrVyCqKwo

If it's not a scheduled appointment, but a "next available time" one, ask to be put on a cancellation notification if you're near the doctor's office; they get a cancellation, call you, you're there in 10 minutes kind of thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why does it take so long to schedule a doctor's appointme... by bookofjoe on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @10:59AM (#35875333)

You must also be psychic! The day after I got my "see you in the future" 2025 appointment, I woke up and saw there was a text from the doctor's office offering an earlier appointment: it said to go to the scheduling portal and follow the instructions.

I thought, "huh." That was around 6 am. I mulled it over: did I even want an earlier appointment? I'm not a big fan of doctors (full disclosure: I am one). So I went about my day and finally around 1 p.m. decided it wouldn't hurt to have a look; after all, I could ignore or decline the offered new slot.

No worries: when I logged on around 1 p.m., the portal said the new slot was no longer available.

I wasn't sad.

[ Parent | on HN ]