When was the last time you arrived for a doctor’s appointment a few minutes early to check-in and complete any paper work, and actually saw the doctor at your scheduled appointment time?

Very rarely? Never? I’ve had to wait half an hour when I was the first appointment of the day?!?!

As a consultant, this drives me crazy.  If I was constantly late for meetings (and significantly late) or always kept clients waiting in our reception area for 15, 30 minutes or more before seeing them, I wouldn’t have clients for very long.

But it’s more than that.  It’s about respecting other people’s time.  Hey Doc, I also have a job to do, appointments to make and personal commitments to keep.

I came down with something on New Year’s Day.  I stayed home from work on Tuesday and Wednesday, but thought I was up to going in on Thursday.  Around midday, I realised I wasn’t up to it, but whatever I had was now starting to drag out, so I decided to go to the doctor.  My doctor (who I started seeing recently is actually pretty good at running on schedule) is closed on Thursday afternoons.  So I went online to look up a walk-in clinic I’d been to before – Appletree. I was going to call and see how long the wait was.

When I found the website, which isn’t anything special, I noticed an icon “Current Wait Times and Locations”.  I clicked on it and wow!!!  They had the approximate wait time to see a doctor at each of their 11 locations in the Ottawa area listed right there on the site.  And it also indicates when (time and date) the wait time for each location was last updated.  I wasn’t ready to leave right away, so I checked back a couple of times and each location updated their wait time pretty regularly.

The location closest to me had a 2 hour wait listed, but the second closest location was only about 30 minutes, so I went to that one.  When I got there, I saw a doctor in, you guessed it, about 30 minutes.  Amazing!

Ottawa has five hospitals.  The General, Civic and Riverside are part of the Ottawa Hospital.  Then there is the Queensway Carleton in the West end and Montfort in the East.  Guess how many list approximate wait times for their Emergency Rooms?  Zero.

If a small network of clinics can offer this service, why can’t any or all of the large hospitals that have significantly greater resources?  Sure you can call, but it would be nice to quickly view and compare the various wait times at several locations to decide where to go.  Maybe drive a little further, but not have to wait as long.

Needless to say, next time I need to see a doctor, my first stop will be www.appletreemedicalgroup.com.

Another note, at the Appletree location I went to on Preston Street, all the Doctor’s had electronic, tablet-style, clipboards used to document the visit and generate prescriptions that both you and the pharmacist can read.