Stories like this get me so fired up. Makes me want to just hang out waiting for the doctor to come back so I can deliver a well deserved ambush. We wouldn't put up with that in a restaurant, why do we put up with it from physicians?

Situations like these cause the public to turn on the medical industry (and that's what it is) and consider it self-serving and self-indulgent. Maybe some of it does have to do with the third party payor aspect of our insurance system - the doc's getting paid whether he sees the patient or not.

Had a similar experience waiting for a 5 minute auto insurance inspection. Called before hadn, Guy said they would be back from lunch at 12:45 and he'd do it at 1 PM. Got there at 1 PM. No one in the office had any clue, but confirmed the guys had gone to lunch. I waited 45 minutes and they never showed, and the woman had packed up her bag and was on her way out. The other guy was busy with a salesman. I walked out. I had been waiting about 10 minutes for someone to be free to give them a piece of my mind, but once the woman left without even acknowledging that I was still waiting after 45 minutes and totally killing my lunch hour, it wasn't worth my time or breath. Needless to say, this is one service station that won't be getting any business from me in the future, not even a gas purchase.

Oh if only it were so easy to switch doctors. I remember being caught in a bad red line delay that put me at a Dr's appointment 15 minutes late, after having to exit the station and hail a cab. The office refused to take me that late, and I had to reschedule. What BS.