DOC TALK WITH DR. GIRLING AND DR. PALOMERA: "WHY DO DOCTORS SOMETIMES RUN LATE?"
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BELOW DR. GIRLING AND DR. PALOMERA ANSWER: WHY DO DOCTORS SOMETIMES RUN LATE?
Dr. Girling: Alright, Doc, how are we doing?
Dr. Palomera: Good so far, but it's early in the morning, ask me later. No we're doing good, good year, good end of the of the year. So it's a big burning question.
Dr. Girling: What’s that?
Dr. Palomera: Why do you always run so late?
Dr. Girling: Oh, come on.
Dr. Palomera: Like, "Why do you give me appointments when you can't be there at my appointment on time
Dr. Girling: So as a group, we are very guilty of overbooking and it's not purposeful. It's because we try to be available to our patients. That's one of our mantras. Y'all built the group on sports medicine, you've got athletes, (the) athlete goes down, he's got a game coming up. You know, mom and dad are worried, got a major injury, maybe they're college ball. We expand that to our entire service line, you know, whenever I'm taking care of adult athletes, or I'm taking care of folks trying to get back to work, things like that. If somebody calls me, I do everything I can to get them in within 24 hours. 48 almost at the worst, if it's somebody that really needs me. So we tend to overbook and then there's a lot of things that go into an actual visit, everybody thinks, "Oh, I'm gonna show up, I'm going to walk in and see a doc. And that's it." It's just not that simple.
Dr. Palomera: Correct. You know, we deal in treating pain. And so a lot of things don't want to wait over the weekend, don't want to wait over a holiday weekend. Certain things come up, where if we're dealing with a fall, somebody not only hurt their knee or their ankle, but they also hurt their shoulder, we don't want to ignore one if we don't have to. Sometimes it is hard. In fact, we try to follow a policy, of trying to limit appointments to see only so many body parts, because it starts to get real cumbersome. And confusing. I think we confuse our patients if we give them too much information, too much to do, you know, and so forth. But a lot of times you've got to bring people in because this is an injury that didn't exist 24 hours ago, you never know when it's broken. You never know when it's surgical. Some surgeries are more urgent than others. And you know, you're a joint specialist. But even with arthritis, you'll have somebody have a weird injury where it may not be a major injury, but it's debilitating to them. It's hard to leave someone that is independent and lives alone and debilitated by pain regardless of (a) body part. You know, and in the course of a lot of, you know, with all the nonoperative stuff I do a lot of the people we treat. It's real, real common, and very understanding that you're there because you injured your knee. "But, you know what, my shoulder has been bothering me. I've been meaning to come in, what can I start doing for my shoulder for now?" So, definitely not intentional. I tell my patients, I don't try to run late all the time.
Dr. Girling: For every visit, you're going to be there for intake which takes time. You're going to be there for X-rays, and we've got to read X-rays. Once we see you we've got to get a plan together. If we're doing an injection, that's a procedure. If afterward, you need additional imaging, we've got to get orders, we've got to get prescriptions, we've got to do your return to play, we've got to fill out paperwork.
Dr. Palomera: As the world goes paperless, there's more paperwork than ever.
Dr. Girling: Absolutely. All those things play in. And then for me, I still take calls at hospitals, up to six different hospitals. So whenever somebody has an emergency, there is a chance that I can get pulled. And we try to limit that as much as possible either during, before or after clinic that can change our timing. And that's why we have all the staff there to help me and support that. But the last thing is we spend time with patients. I'm sorry, I'm not going to ever stop doing that because people are in my waiting room because they want their time too. So I make sure that I spend enough time with every patient, they feel comfortable, they got what they were there for, they got the answers. I'm not going to stand in the room at the door and do a hi, hey, nice to see you and run away with it. I'm gonna stop and sit down and talk to you. And you're gonna know why you're there. And at the end of the day, if somebody is not okay with that I'm probably not the provider for you. Just the sad reality you know, I want patients that want to see me and they want to be taken care of that way. I don't want somebody who just wants a cookie-cutter interaction with somebody who doesn't care. That's not me and I'm, I'm not gonna apologize to my patients for that.
Dr. Palomera: We try to give you the time you need.
Dr. Girling: Absolutely.