Another Huntsville Doctor…Fired
By me, that is. You may recall that not only did I fire one doctor, but I also sent him a bill. I am sorry to report that he is delinquent in his payment. No surprise there.
DS16 has been seeing a dermatologist in Huntsville, which is the largest city near us, for about a year now. He goes every two months, and it is quite an ordeal. Generally, we leave our house around the time he would normally go to school. We make the drive, park in the garage, and walk into the office where we sign in. Then we wait. And wait. For an hour, minimum, and I am not kidding. After our hour-plus wait, we are finally called back to a room where we wait for a half-hour, minimum. And again, I’m not kidding. Finally we see the doctor, who I will admit is very good, thorough, and seems to not be in a hurry, which is a surprise since at this point she is at least an hour and a half behind schedule.
We then leave the office, drive through somewhere for lunch, head back to our town, and I check DS16 into school after 12:00, which is at least four hours after we left our house, so he can receive two hours of education. And this is repeated multiple times throughout the school year.
Sometimes, I have gone to the front desk and complained. They calmly apologize and tell me that there are only two people ahead of me, ask if I want to reschedule, and have me sit back down. And wait. Well, last week enough was enough. After an hour in the waiting room, I knew where this was going. I asked how much longer, reminded them that it was now eleven and my appointment was at ten and listened as the incompetent (apparently) office manager informed me that only one person was ahead of me and would I like to reschedule. And I blew a gasket and went off. Any other of my kids would have buried their head in a magazine and refused to acknowledge that I was even from the same planet, let alone their mother. But DS16 is a nice kid, and he just watched and waited patiently.
I told the manager that I have never in my life seen such a poorly managed office, that I could understand running behind occasionally, but every. single. time. was getting old. It was disrespectful of me and my time. Furthermore, a new dermatologist has come to town where I live, so this doctor is fired, thanks, in case she missed my point, to her poor management of the office calendar. With that, I said, “Come on, DS16,” and stormed out of the office. I would think that the others in the office probably figured I was a nut, but frankly they probably sympathized with every word that spewed from my flapping gums.
And I just have to ask, what is it with these Huntsville doctors? They seem to completely disrespect us patients and our time. I have lived in bigger cities, folks. Greenville. Atlanta. San Diego. Being in a large city does not give a doctor the right to assume that all of the lower-class citizens from podunksville have no life–and I have never had this kind of experience in any of these other places. And yet, that seems to be the mentality in the oh-so-big Huntsville. I think I’ll take our smaller town doctors who rub shoulders regularly with their patients–whose kids play on the same soccer teams and go to the same schools, who shop at the same stores, and who worship in the same churches–and who therefore respect their patients as regular members of society who deserve respect, over these too-big-for-their-britches types over in Huntsville.
Besides, I’ll save a bundle on gas and lunch.
July 8th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
I’m with you on that - folks who think they are superior in some way and thus disrespectful of other people’s time/opionion/anything are not worth the effort.