I took my sister, who has Medi-Cal, for an appointment we had made over a month in advance. We arrived 30 minutes early to allow time for ""new patient paperwork."" There were pages and pages of redundant questions and repeat forms -- it was a good thing we got there early. Then we WAITED, AND WAITED, AND WAITED. At that time, they were the only place I could find who took new Medi-Cal patients, we felt stuck. Within 15 minutes of turning in our paperwork and our original apointment time, the doctor arrives and immediately goes into a conference room where several other staff members were already situated. About an hour and a half into our wait, I asked the front desk gal for an estimate of how much longer. She said 10 minutes. Two hours out and still waiting, I went to the front desk again and asked for a time estimate -- by this time my sister was crawling the walls; she has a pretty low threshold for stress, but even a hardcore stoic would have been challenged -- the front desk gal then tells me that the doc and staff were having their weekly chart review and it could take anywhere from one to three hours; she then had the audacity to assure me my sister would be seen as soon as they were done -- right! by now the waiting room is overflowing with people spilling out into the parking lot. What kind of clinic shedules patients when they know they have staff meetings scheduled??? How could a doc actually think this kind of set-up is useful to either his practice or his patients??? After two and a half hours, we left. If this is how they approach something as simple as scheduling, how can they possibly know how to provide medical care?
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