As with most older people, particularly women, my mother had to see her doctor on a regular basis. She had been going to one doctor for a number of years and he was her cardiologist and primary care physician. The biggest challenge was that he constantly overbooked. When my mother saw him, an hour wait was the norm and more than that was not unusual. It was a bit better when she met with the Nurse Practitioner but the doctor always seemed to want to check in and see how she was doing. That would cause more delays. In reality, we all believed he wanted that two minute consultation so he could bill more.
At one point, my mother needed to have her pacemaker replaced. This required monthly office visits until the battery was in the red zone or insurance wouldn't pay for it. My brother or sister-in-law had to take her every month for almost a year and each trip consumed hours of their time. The doctor could have easily had the device monitored by a phone hook-up but then he couldn't bill as much so he chose to waste the patient's and family's time.
When my mother finally was ready to get the pacemaker replaced, it fell to me to deal with it since my brother was suffering from advanced stages of his cancer. The surgeon who would perform the operation required sign-off from the primary care physician as is normal. Unfortunately, her primary care physician decided to put her through extra tests including a stress test. If you aren't familiar with them, it's a procedure that last a couple of hours. Most PCPs don't do the test themselves but, of course, my mother's doctor likes to do things most doctors don't do in order to increase revenue. Her doctor only did these tests two days a week and so I picked a day when she could get in early. Her appointment was scheduled for 8:30 am which was the second appointment of the day.
When we go to the office, the receptionist advised us there were running about 30 minutes behind schedule since they had a problem setting up the machine. The patient who was ahead of us went in about 40 minutes late so they were fairly accurate. By the time my mother went in, it was about 90 minutes past her scheduled time. I don't know where the extra 50 minutes went since the only person ahead of us was 40 minutes behind schedule.
Normally a stress test includes a treadmill with the doctor supervising. In my mother's case, this part was skipped since she could barely walk without a cane, let alone walk on a treadmill. This should have made things move more quickly but a process that should have taken two hours wasn't finished until FIVE HOURS after her appointment should have begun. Ok, so they were behind 30 minutes because of the machine problems but it took 3 hours longer than it should have and she was the second patient of the day. To say I was fed up with this nonsense was an understatement.
When we met with the surgeon, he agreed that he had heard a lot of bad things about my mother's cardiologist/primary care physician. They were both in the same building and he saw all the same patients so he had a good perspective on things. He gave me a recommendation for another doctor and suggested we wait until after the surgery to make a change. In the past, my mother had fought with my brother about changing doctors because she just didn't like change. By the time I got involved, she was more than fed up and agreed to make the change. It didn't hurt that she wanted to accommodate my wishes since I was the son she never saw. I have a feeling she thought I wouldn't show up if she didn't do it my way.
I'm sure along the way, I'll relay more on this doctor but for now trust me when I say he was not concerned with wasting his patients time if it meant more money in his pocket. While he was knowledgeable, I would say he was among the worst doctors I had ever encountered. In future posts I'll be telling you about the good doctors and there are many out there and I'll tell you about some of them.
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