Drs striking people off their lists !

I believe it is a type of text message if I am thinking in the right tank lol.

SMS is a phone message service for reminding people of their appointments -

when you schedule your appointments its put in the doctors computer schedule planner, then the day before your appointment the computer system dials your phone number and a generic message is played to who ever picks up the phone or to your phones answering/voice mail box saying something like -

"this call is to remind amanda that she has an appointment on monday november 29th at 9am, please call ---------- to cancel and reschedule if Amanda cannot make this appointment. thank you, good bye."

Thanks folks, could not have explained it better myself!

Thanks for the explanation of SMS. Yes, most of my doctors and dentists have a system like that. I thought of it as an automated voicemail. My kids' school uses that too to inform parents of various events and happenings. Some of my doctors' offices still have an actual human make the reminder phone call, though. I don't think the SMS is any better than the human, really, from the patient's point of view. But it probably saves the doctor's office time and money. If it is a human calling and my daughters answer the phone, they will at least talk to the person and get the message and perhaps remember to tell me. If it is an auto message, my daughters hang up immediately before hearing what it's about, so I don't get the message that way. (I tend to hang up on robot calls too.) So, pros and cons.

I think the doctors that work for corporations are under enormous pressure to be hyper-efficient and meet targets, often at the expense of good medical care. The typical appointment with my doctor is a 15 minute slot. She also has 30 minute and 45 minute slots for more complex appointments and procedures. But it is really hard to get one of those. It seems like the wait for a 15 minute appointment is usually only a week or two, but the wait for a 30 minute appointment can be a couple of months, and for a 45 minute appointment, perhaps even 6 months. Once recently my doctor told me to schedule a 30 minute follow-up appointment to take care of several things, and the office staff were very uncooperative in scheduling me. They said it would be several months wait, even when I told them the doctor said I should return in a month. I asked them if they didn't have any 30 minute appointments available, did they have any times in the schedule when they had 2 consecutive 15 minute openings, and I would just take that. They said yes, they had a number of consecutives like that, but they still wouldn't give me those appointments! Go figure that. Talk about being unhelpful!

OMG I KNOW exactly what you're talking about!!!! They guard those extended appointments like they come out of their own time or something! When my son had to get his toenail removed because it was ingrown and INFECTED, the doctor wrote on the sheet "30 minute follow up appointment needed between x and y".

They didn't have a 30 minute follow up appointment within those days. I too asked for two consecutive 15 minute appointments and they said "we can't do that". I had to pull out my cell, call his nurse that was a mere 15 feet away but we were seperated by a locked door and tell her the problem. SHE came out and they wouldn't make the appointment for her either. The Doctor had to come out and say "just DO it, we have to remove that toenail after he's been on the antibiotics x days and before it becomes re-infected!"

When i was decending into mental illness a GP doctor once struck me off his list. He was ignorant at mental illness an didnt know what to do, so he thought i will get rid of the problem.

That is terrible !

I feel guilty now for moaning, if I want a double appt I just ask and can have one within a day or two. For a normal appt its normally on the same day unless I either phone too late in the day in which case its a next day appt or one I actually want booked up for some time in the future.

The only ones we have to wait a day or two is for the nurse who is normally VERY busy and we dont often get in to see her the same day but def the same week.

My prescriptions are free.

If I want to see a specialist especially now I have moved to Scotland, I get a referral within six to eight weeks if its urgent I will get a cancelled (one reason for phoning in to cancel ! ) appt within four weeks. Normally quicker.

Its not as good in England however its still free.

I remember Paddy (everyones fav old member who recently passed away RIP) told me to be grateful for what we in the UK have and I mark him right.

So I apologise for moaning about the NHS.

Every program has it's problems, Tishie. When it hits you, you have a right to gripe, believe me. HUGGS

I will moan obout the NHS all day. I have payed in over £60,000 national; insurance an get generic meds instead of real ones. Get to see third world shrinks an gp,s ,who you no nothing , only from the nhs bible .You could write what they know on the back of a matchbox an still have room left.

Up in Scotland its not like that (well not from the part I am living in) however in London it was simlar to the way you describe.

i live in nottinghamshire, mental units are separate from the main hospital NHS an are run differently, GP,S surgeries work round the clock in shift rota,s because of the influx of imigrants from poland ect ect. you can see a doc quick enough, but if you want your own doctor who you have seen for years , expect to wait 3 weeks.

Hey Tishie,
About 6 years ago i was going to therapy for anxiety and ADHD. Then I was assaulted at work. Then we upped my visits for PTSD (I had a limited number of visits a year with my insurance and I was almost to the limit already)

I fought with worker's comp for a few weeks, and they said the only way I would qualify was if I had PTSD. My therapist contacted them and gave the diagnosis. Then worker's comp decided it didn't happen at work (even though the police report said it did) and would not pay for anymore therapy visits.

Then, the next day, on the way to therapy I had to stop at the DA's office to drop off some paper work. The Assistant DA wanted to ask me a few questions, and made me hang around and miss my therapy appt.

I drove straight to my therapists, 30 minutes late, and rescheduled. The lady behind the sliding window was very rude and informed me that if it happend again, I would not longer be able to be seen at that clinic (they go with the 2 strike method). I told them where I had been and why, but it didn't matter.

The combination of everything, the feeling that my therapist was abandoning me (even though I knew she wasn't the one who did it, but it is how I felt at the time), worker's comp not paying, I couldn't go back to work - I can never step foot in that place again, no money, no way to pay our bills, everyone knowing what happened (I lived in a small farming village of 300 people), that is what drove me to lock myself in my room for a month. That is why I didn't continue my therapy.

I think it was horrible. Definelty not the type of situation where you want to threaten the patient.

I would have gone. I wanted to go. I was on my way to go. But, I didn't have a handy cell phone to call with at that time (or 24 hours notice), so that was it. But, I still paid for the time slot.

And, to make it worse, I forgot my rescheduled appt, because I was locked in my bedroom thinking the whole world had turned against me, and nothing would ever be okay again.

Sorry that was so long. The point wouldn't make sense without the backstory.

mj

HUGS to you mj... I am so sorry this happened to you I really am I think life at times can be awful.

To them you missed 2 appointments someone else could have had,why no cell phone or public phone thats what they would think.You missed 2 spots another patient would have wanted. More people miss appointments than use them so im afraid , that one was down to you not them.

Your system sounds very good, Tishie. So, England is better, though? One good thing about my health insurance is I don't need referrals to specialists. If I want to see a specialist, I just call one up and make an appointment. I can usually get in pretty quickly. I see several specialists. The family docs are generalists and have a very conservative approach. Sometimes I just get tired of it and want my health problem to be dealt with quickly instead of trying the most conservative approach, getting no results, having to go for follow-up appointment, trying a slightly less conservative approach, getting no results, going for follow-up... They can really wear one down with that cycle. The specialist has more experience and knows what to do to solve the problem quickly. Often I don't think the specialist really costs more than the family doc, because family doc requires 3 appointments or more to do what the specialist does in 1. So sometimes I just skip the family docs altogether unless it is for basic concerns.

What a day today! Our insurance company requires us to get annual blood work done. For the past several weeks hubby has been trying to set up an appointment for us to get them done. We had an appointment for first thing this morning (fasting test) but they discovered we no longer had a doctor on record it hit the fan. Since our doctor left the clinic, they wanted to require us to set up a "new patient" appointment with one of the new doctors before we could get this blood done.

The clinic hung up on my husband twice today. He had to call the main office to ask why we couldn't get this simple blood work done. Eventually they decided that if we could produce paperwork stating the blood work was required by our insurance they would do the test (really who calls and asks for random blood tests?)... this time.

So we had to keep fasting until 1:30 this afternoon.

I am tired of these new proceedures!

Here we fast but have to have bloods done before 11.00 am so the blood can be sent off the same day for results.

Hence only mornings for blood work and the reason its harder to get an appt with the nurse.

I HATE fasting I love my food ... lol.

true if your on your doctors computer in england it comes up when you are required to have blood tests, so a letter is sent to you, to attend a nurse at the surgery.if you are on a lot of meds for mental probs these blood tests are acential . My last came back as kidney malfunction do to to many ibrufrin tabs for arthritis,so i had to cut down.If your on bipolor meds, its crutial to have liver bloodwork tests./// soory for spelling im self taught.

I have no doubt that the appointments were changed to punish us for not making appointments with one of the new doctors there.

Earlier I made nine phone calls in one day to local family physicians. Kind of an achievement in itself since I hate phone calls. I made it very clear that I was insured and had money for co-payments. All of them were uninterested in accepting new patients. They already had too many.

If finding a new doctor is normally this hard then dropping patients puts people in a bad situation.

Sounds like this would make a nice little article in your local newspaper. Is your insurance a PPO (you need to see network providers)? If so, I think this kind of experience should be reported to your insurance company. What would their response be? It seems like they need to add more docs to their ranks of family physicians if their insured can't find physicians.

Good luck with finding a doctor.

You should be able to find a doctor in america, after all you have all are english ones, You guys pay our english docs an shrinks megga bucks.We get the left over,s an imports from poland, india, ect ect

This is very common in the area that I am from. It is a very economically depressed area (starting in the mid 80s) and when an old doctor dies or retires it is nearly impossible to find a doctor and if you do it doesn't mean that you will get all services.

The doctor that delivered my first baby is the most popular doctor in the area. Even though I had been with him from the beginning of his practice and he's a family friend it was impossible to get into so see him for an illness. Your only option was to see one of the three PA working under him.

During the late 90s he quit doing OB care. He was the last doctor in 100 mile radius that accepted OB patients. He just couldn't handle the hours anymore. Babies are unpredictable, malpractice insurance is extremely expensive. The only reason he kept the OB portion of his practice open was because he knew that women had to travel 150 miles to see an OB.

I am very sorry that you are having such a difficult time finding a doctor. Did the offices that you called give any suggestions as to which doctors are accepting new patients? I'm not sure what type of a doctor you are looking for, but since ours left we have been going to Fast Tracks in Shopko. Our first choice for a new doctor is not accepting any new patients so for ear/sinus infections and the like the care is adequate... the hours are very patient friendly and even though we have to pay for the visit up front, it ends up being cheaper. Its a flat $50 fee that is refunded through our insurance (which they happily bill once you've paid the fee).