My review is for the front office and management, as I was not able to see the doctor. I called to…read moremake an appointment and provided all of the information that I was asked for. Shortly after hanging up the phone, I got a text from the young girl who scheduled my appointment. She asked me to send her a copy of my driver's license by replying to the text, which I promptly did.
On the day of my appointment, I arrived at the office 15 minutes early to fill out any additional paperwork. The girl answering the phones was busy making an appt for a new patient which, as I already knew, is very time-consuming. There were two other staff members present, but apparently none of them were trained to hand me my new patient check-in forms because they told me I'd have to wait. So finally, around 15 minutes later, the young girl was done with her phone call and able to check me in. The only problem is that I was not on their schedule. Not only that, but they didn't seem to have any record of me at all. Had I gone to the wrong office??
I scrolled through my texts to find the one requesting my license, in which the girl had stated her name. I said "isn't this you?" Yes, it was her and I was at the right place. Why am I not on the schedule at the time we discussed??
According to the young girl, she never received the picture of my license (which, from my end, had been sent), so she cancelled the appointment. No follow-up call requesting my license again. I don't even think I got a call letting me know they were cancelling the appt, although they had already set the precedent of communicating by text, so it would've been appropriate to send a follow-up text. When I pressed her to find out why there was no follow through, she said that she only works there part-time, so there was no way for her to follow up with me the next day, as it was her day off.
Now, I don't solely blame her. She was obviously rather young and inexperienced and was just doing her best. But what a terrible lack of management that there are no procedures in place to handle this kind of thing! And what kind of establishment just cancels an appt after I obviously wanted to see the doctor, based on my initial investment of time in scheduling the appt?? I had already waited a couple of weeks for my appt, and I was in a tremendous amount of pain due to a pinched nerve in my neck. On top of that, they had wasted another 20 minutes of my time since I had arrived at the office for my appointment. The best they could do was to apologize and offer me an appointment in another week or so. No thanks.
At this point, I think the appropriate thing for the doctor to do would be to see me that day. I understand maybe he was completely booked. Then he should stay late. I would've come back at the end of the day. I had already arranged to have the afternoon off from work so that I could be seen by him, and I find it inexcusable that the office is run in such a way that the staff just cancels appts because of one small piece of information missing. They demonstrated a total lack of consideration for my time and circumstances.
