Daniel - “Setting expectations is a big part of it.” I 100% agree - I guess the part I don’t understand is why we expect to have to wait at the doctor’s office, yet we rarely change.

As a new agent, you constantly hear “be on time”. If you say you’ll be there at a certain time, be there. Clients and customers are quick to kick some service industries to the curb for something like being late, yet other industries - like the medical profession - seem to be immune to it. It’s interesting to me …

Interesting that you should bring this up. I have had A LOT of experience with doctors over the past few years. I recently changed my family doctor specifically because I got tired of always having to wait inordinate amounts of time for appointments. It really made me mad. I felt disrespected.

On the flip side, I spent a lot of time at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. Perhaps one of the busiest hospitals in the world. In all the times I went there, I NEVER had to wait even 5 minutes past my appointment time. Seriously.

The systems that they have in place, an the people who run them are fabulous, and it makes the whole experience a lot better. A lot of it is about delivering on promises made. If you tell me that you are going to see me at 1pm, but you know it will take me 10 minutest to get checked in, tell me that when you schedule the appointment. Setting expectations is a big part of it.

One reason that I think people put up with it at the doctor’s office is because they NEED to see the doctor. If it was for something that could be put off to another time, then you would.

There are other doctors out there, and medical histories are easily passed.

Within the travel industry, some will choose one airline or hotel chain over another because of a past experience - whether good or bad. I don’t go to a particular restaurant here in the New River Valley anymore because of an experience I had there with food poisoning … it was likely a one-time thing, but it ruined my experience and so I make the choice to go somewhere else.

With a physician, however, as bad as that wait time may be, and as often as the pattern may be repeated, we keep going back. To me, it’s an interesting look at consumer habits, although I don’t know quite what it tells us.

Talk about a “cartel” …