A “brave” IT specialist successfully billed her doctors for waiting time because of “mutual respect.” In her equation one hour equals $47. My first thought about this was “makes sense because I could get billed for showing up late at some providers too.” I have never been billed anything extra for being late to an appointment with a physician, but my mom had to pay $50 for a no-show at a dentist.

My second thought about this was, “that’s messed up.” I understand that people generally get very frustrated when they have to wait, especially in our fast-paced society. Waiting for the doctor is unfortunately not a rare phenomenon, but what is important is the reason why a doctor is usually late.

Im sure there are plenty of doctors that are just managing their own time badly, but for the vast majority delays in treatment happen because doctors are seeing particularly sick patients (in some cases, like the ER it could be life or death), are understaffed, or forced to admit more patients than they have the capacity for.

In conclusion, not running on-time does not equal disrespect to the patient – there might have a very good reason.

Here is the video: