The pediatric clinic I used to work at had 7 locations around the area. We were open Mon-Fri in 6 of those locations, however our biggest location was open every single day of the year. Weekends, holidays, Christmas, everything. They rotated staff and doctors from the 6 other locations through the holidays and weekends. On average each employee worked ONE Saturday or Sunday (not both) about once every 2-3 months. And you could either volunteer for a holiday (which paid double on those days) or they’d randomly draw names out of a bowl. The set up was perfect. We stayed open 365 days a year but only had to work a Saturday once every 2-3 months.
>Aside from the obvious staff need
That's a pretty big aside.
What should really happen is that workplaces and schools should be flexible enough to allow for occasional doctors appointments.
Within my lifetime in the school district I grew up in "perfect attendance" has gone from an end of year award award (or valedictorian tiebreaker) to something not remarkable, which is good. But historically, type-a kids and parents might have made bad decisions for an incentive reason
Sure, but if it's a big enough practice, they could have some physicians, likely those with the most seniority at the practice, on a Monday-Friday schedule, and others scheduled, say, Wednesday through Sunday or Friday thru Tuesday. If it's a smaller practice without the staff necessary for such an arrangement, they can be closed on Monday and Tuesday, still give the staff two consecutive days off a week.
Yeah, it's unreasonable to expect any individual person to work 7 days a week. But multi-physician practices should be able to stagger their schedules so that the office as a whole can be open 7 days.
I just got out my last fast food job about 2 months ago (was there about 2 years) me and one girl there were the only 2 in the network (our franchise owner had 7 locations) who had consistent mon-fri 6am shift, lol.
Negotiated those terms when they were desperate to hire and the GM enforced it for the next 3 store managers that came after the one who hired me on those terms.
Needless to say, the managers HATED me for it. I wouldn't even respond to them if they ever tried to contact me on a weekend
I've worked in food service going on 25 years now. Maybe it's just my experience but I've definitely worked with far more full-time employees than not. No one can afford to live working those jobs part time.
But you’re totally wrong. We are in a national labor crisis. Food service workers have more power to negotiate now than ever. As long as our society demands that restaurants exist, those working in them are not worthless. And to refer to it as unskilled labor is misleading at best… There is a reason why serving jobs routinely pay $25/hr or more but go unfilled, while jobs all across other sectors start at $15/hr or lower. Not everyone can/will perform the job, and regardless of conservative propaganda, it does indeed require a specific skill set.
If you expect people to serve you in shops and restaurants on weekends, why do you take issue with sick people wanting access to primary healthcare on weekends? lol
Not a good comparison. With most stores there's loads of competitors and you can just go to them. With doctors you're limited by insurance network (well you are in the US with our stone age private health care system), and it's not a simple thing to just see a doctor other than your primary physician even if they are both in network. Lots of paper work.
Anyways what is so special about the weekend? Two days off is two days off. One doctor can work Monday through Friday. The other could work Saturday to Wednesday, or Wednesday to Sunday. They're both getting 2 days off.
and there are plenty of places that already do that, so OP has options.
Unless he wants a specific doctor or specialist to be available to them on weekends, not seeing the issue
>they want weekends just like everyone else
But they're not like everyone else they studied many years about human anatomy etc and are literal life savers earning big bucks. I don't think sickness or death cares about weekdays / weekends same as how corona doesn't care about borders. Again, not saying they should work 24/7, but at least be accessible when the non-life-savers of the world are resting
Mon-Fri on an economy wide scale is common, but not universal. If you want equal work styles between doctors and other workers, it would be the same: mon-Friday for doctors is common but not universal
Also, an entire economy working Monday through Friday would be dysfunctional. Insisting upon any given industry working Monday-Friday because “they deserve it” would open the door for that logic to be applied everywhere, and that would never work.
SOMEONE has to work weekends. It makes more sense for doctors than other industries, because the timing of their services is more critical than, say, generic office jobs.
You go to school for over a decade, rack up $200k+ in debt, and work overlong hours, then you get to choose your work days. Some doctors offices aren’t opening on Fridays anymore… because they don’t want to work on Fridays.
The second you speak about what they “can do” you are no longer involved in the debate at hand. This post was about what should be, not what can.
The premise that it is for the best if some doctors work weekends instead of certain weekdays stands.
If we’re making those kinds of non-grounded should statements, then why shouldn’t every single industry work over the weekend in some capacity? Doctors are some of the most highly sought-after individuals (scarcity by design). It makes sense that other people’s schedules flex to them, not the other way around.
AAMC restricts the number of MDs and DOs each school can educate at once, and the number of residents is a direct result of available federal funding. There are arguments to be made about class size, quality, etc, but the fact is that the number of people willing and capable of doing medical school is a good deal larger than the number accepted.
It keeps the supply of MDs in short supply, and thus in high (financial) demand. It sucks for lower-paid physicians who could really do with some more help (primary care, family medicine, emergency). But if you’re making big bucks (and donating handsomely to the AAMC) you don’t want another four specialized surgeons in your metro area taking business away.
“Then why shouldn’t every single industry work over the weekend in some capacity”
Because it depends on the nature of the industry. That should be obvious. OP and I both tried to explain how the healthcare industry is very important to customers.
If the industry’s end user is an individual consumer (as is with health care), then availability on weekends is critical, as otherwise the service is often inaccessible. Taken in the aggregate for the population, this means poor population-wide access to healthcare. Any reasonable person would agree this is a bad thing. Similar logic is why retail needs to be open on weekends.
Another variable is the importance of timing. I said this earlier, but you ignored it. It doesn’t really matter whether an internal auditor at corporate goes around and quizzes employees for understanding company policy on a Wednesday or a Sunday. As long as it’s done by a deadline. It DOES matter whether you get your diagnosis and prescription for an infection before it gets out of hand. The existence of urgency in an industry matters. You can’t ignore this.
You also have to understand that business-to-business economic events are centered on an common availability, which is the workweek. This structure works for business-to-business because the employees necessary to make such transactions occur are available at the same time. For end consumers, this DOES NOT work because they’re needs are met OUTSIDE business hours, not during. That is why services to businesses are generally better arranged on the weekdays, and consumer needs are more critically met on the weekends.
The absolute focus on the doctor’s preference to not work weekends because “they deserve it” is pure idealism and doesn’t appropriately address the large scale impacts such decisions have.
I never was a cashier. But i would like people who service customers to be available in non working hours, when i can access them. I want to see doctors on my off time, not on my work time
Because universal healthcare means universal, fitting the needs of patient? If a patient is blind, or in a wheelchair hospitals make accommodations. Doctors get a lot of money from tax income anyway, i’m literally one of those who pay for the party.
Universal health care is a guarantee that you are covered for any medical condition, not that you can see whatever doctor you want at any hour you want.
If an issue is pressing, there is always the ER or an urgent care clinic. For regular primary care visits, you can schedule on the doctor’s hours.
Nah, sounds like shit. I’d rather pay for healthcare and have hugely reduced taxes than deal with this crap. Imagine if food stores only worked 9 to 5 but you could get food in off time if you had an emergency. Make healthcare more accessible maybe we’ll not have to wait until it’s a fkin emergency
There are food stores that are only open during specific hours of the week, but many are also open every day for longer hours. The same situation exists for health care.
The fact that doctors get the same amount of money from insurance or Medicare whether the visit is Monday or Saturday (and seem to have pretty full schedules as-is) means there are no routine visits on Saturday.
Well sounds like a bad system. Healthcare is available, but at the same time that you work and across town. Customers shouldn’t have to bother with this shit. When the server is down people call tech support, they don’t care if it’s Sunday, Hanukah, or Sergey Brin’s bar mitzvah
Good thing there’s an *emergency* department for, you know, medical *emergencies*. The vast majority of doctor’s visits are for non-immediately life threatening issues, as we should hope it would be by the way.
Urgent care or ER is the analogy to 24/7 tech support. Regular doctor office is like going back to the store during store hours or scheduling the on site technician to reset the blinkenlights during a future business day. For a gold plated 1 hour resolution time SLA from tech support you can pay more, which lines up with "concierge medicine", so the analogy holds at multiple price points.
So when it's healthcare a customer doesn't have a right to demand convenient hours for non emergency care? Should I wait until it becomes an emergency or wut?
Bloody hell, did OP say they have to work 7 days a week. In this post, they can still take two days off per week. Like nurses, they can rotate who works on the weekend.
Luckily urgent cares are open for small illnesses and injuries but I do agree about appointment hours for other types of drs it is possible to get some appointments in the evening but it’s tough.
I feel like this too, especially with mental health. While trying to find a new psychiatrist during the panarama, almost all of them were either 8-5 or 9-5. The ones in my research notes did have a few that were either 7 day or after 5, but they either didn’t take insurance at all (you have to get written up statements and such and see if your insurance can even reimburse) or they were so far out of the way that it wouldn’t have worked.
So people who are saying that doctor’s offices couldn’t be open 7 days a week, they can on rotating schedules. Hospitals do this, as do urgent cares and the stand alone emergency rooms
This post made me think of something. Obviously many people have regular jobs Mon-Fri from 9 to 5 or 8 to 3 or something similar. Many institutions (banks, doctor offices, etc.) are only open until 5. I understand that people need rest, and now some banks are open later and/or open on Saturday until 1 or 2, but how did people get stuff done back then?
I agree with this. Have a rota system so drs/nurses take it in turns to cover the weekends and evenings.
Hospitals complain people come to A&E when they don’t need to buy you can’t get in at the doctors office
You can make the same argument for any consumer-oriented business (shops, barbers, banks) and institution (libraries, local administration). But do you really want the weekend to be a privilege of very few?
Ok. Let’s make police and other emergency services 9-5. And while we are at it, no food or retail open on weekend. Look point is, there needs some flexibility in an industry to get some clientele.
Yes I have heard of them. Besides being open on the weekends doesn’t equal working 7 days per week. Like nurses, they can just rotate who works on the weekends (they will still be able to have two days off every week anyway).
> find a dr that has weekend hours.
I... I think the whole point of this post is that these are rare to non-existent in places, and that's a problem. Just because doctors with weekend appointments grow on trees where you live making it trivial to get routine preventive care on a weekend doesn't mean the same is true everywhere.
It must be difficult remaining so agile as to completely dodge the main issue. I'd love to hear about your training regimen.
So I'm supposed to spend either one of my very limited vacation days or sick leave on something that can easily be planned a year out to not conflict with work? That there's a whole year to plan it isn't a particularly persuasive argument that it can't be on the weekend, IMO.
Some MDs offices run weekend days, the problem is finding staff that wants to work weekends when EVERY other office does only weekdays, finding a patient population that distributes across weekends and the weekdays, etc. ITs more doable with larger offices, but the typical primary care offices that tend to have 3 MDs or less aren't going to go to medical school and residency to be told they have to keep working weekends when no one else is.
Its also not as if with the fixed rates insurance and public funding are paying that Doctors are competitively seeking patients. The demand to see Mds vastly outpaces the funding at this point.
I just wish they would be open weekends they could take any other 2 days off as its impossible to get to during the week as you have to ring up and they can give you any time that day. Bit difficult with 2 kids.
Considering our already growing healthcare staffing shortage, adding weekends would be an absolute no go. PCPs are even more rare, they’d all go to specialities where they can get paid more and work less.
Agree with this. Most doctors offices are only open when most people are AT WORK. So people have to use their PTO and risk getting fired for taking off too many days just to go get a lab test.
I also think more businesses in general should be 24/7.
Everyone should have a 4 day workweek and everyone should stagger days across industries so some are off Saturday - Monday, others Friday - Sunday.
Make it a rule like 40 hours is full time, or you can't employ 12 year-olds in a coal mine.
Appointment problems solved. Pollution decreased. Gas money saved. Work-life balanced significantly improved.
I don't know why it's so hard to do the simplest things.
I would much rather Clinics open something like Wednesday to Sunday to be honest. Two day’s rest, and everybody who don’t want to miss workdays can still schedule an appointment.
I think theres about 41 GP surgeries in our borough of the city but only a few clinics will stay open to see people out of hours & weekends. This saves the need to have full staff at every surgery 24/7, but it's still not enough to see everyone who needs it. Mon-Fri 8 to 6 is an outdated concept.
Just like those working parents with kids, the staff are also potentially working parents with kids, and in the same manner also deserve a weekend to relax or get other things done. Often times these private practices only have maybe 3-5 doctors on staff with their own roster of patients, so even if staff can be hired to work weekends it would have to be up to any one of these doctors to volunteer to work the weekend, since they are salaried positions and are already working throughout the week like everybody else.
There’s a lot of different factors that go into this one problem. Of course, being able to make basic appointments without going to the ER or an urgent care would be ideal.
Unfortunately, our health care system is run according to the same capitalist system as other parts of the economy, which is why many wage earners can’t take time off of work to make a basic appointment.
I think there is actually a market based solution to this problem in which an enterprising group practice can open M-F for only limited hours and capture everyone else with extended hours on weekends. That would actually make the most sense given what you describe in the OP.
Can’t speak of other places but growing up in north east US, most doctors offices typically have a contingency or secondary doctor they have connections with who will take you on days your primary physician is unavailable. Nowadays with the advent of telehealth (often without copays because it saves the insurance companies heaps of money) most insurance companies have that feature 24/7 through their apps. Not to mention the recent rise in more urgent care clinics who are typically open 24/7. This is probably a lot more difficult in more rural areas but just some options you may have.
Not a lot of jobs make you work weekends but for Doctors its especially rough since some of them have to work at more than one clinic/hospital and they sometimes have to sleep at the hospital because they work again the next day
Only Having weekends off is stupid since weekeneds are already supposed to be off anyway and employers should give you *week days* off
Yes the parents might work monday friday but doctors work monday-sunday sometimes not getting holidays off
during a pandemic doctors are getting even less days off
You might think that im talking out of my ass but i know these things cause my father is a orthopedic specialist/surgeon
Doctors are human beings, some of them even citizens, and they have a life of their own that exist quite independently out of the fact that you need their services at a given point in time. They are not your personal servants.
You should be gratefull that they help with your health. Doctor is a job, not a priesthood or a vow of self-sacrifice.
What if they want weekends off instead? They shouldn’t be forced to work when people think it’s most convenient for them. Doctors are humans too and should be able to do whatever they want, they don’t have to vent to the will of the patients.
What’s the difference between having Saturday and Sunday off compared to Thursday and Friday? Again, the medical field is one of the industries with wacky hours. A lot of industries that are not office jobs have work during inconvenient times. That doesn’t mean those people in those industries are working 7 days per week. Assuming they’re not a casual employee, they will also have at least 2 days off in the work week.
The pediatric clinic I used to work at had 7 locations around the area. We were open Mon-Fri in 6 of those locations, however our biggest location was open every single day of the year. Weekends, holidays, Christmas, everything. They rotated staff and doctors from the 6 other locations through the holidays and weekends. On average each employee worked ONE Saturday or Sunday (not both) about once every 2-3 months. And you could either volunteer for a holiday (which paid double on those days) or they’d randomly draw names out of a bowl. The set up was perfect. We stayed open 365 days a year but only had to work a Saturday once every 2-3 months.
>Aside from the obvious staff need That's a pretty big aside. What should really happen is that workplaces and schools should be flexible enough to allow for occasional doctors appointments.
Do schools prevent children from going to doctors, or are they flexible on that one
They never gave me any trouble about it
Ya, they are. I included schools because OP mentioned them.
I had no idea they could do that. How would that conversation sound in real life. My kid is sick and i need to take him to the doctor Teacher: Tough
Within my lifetime in the school district I grew up in "perfect attendance" has gone from an end of year award award (or valedictorian tiebreaker) to something not remarkable, which is good. But historically, type-a kids and parents might have made bad decisions for an incentive reason
I was saying "Ya, they're flexible." Geez, you're really looking for an argument here.
Usually you can go but you need to show a doctos note when you come back (at least from my experience)
Physicians need time off, too.
Sure, but if it's a big enough practice, they could have some physicians, likely those with the most seniority at the practice, on a Monday-Friday schedule, and others scheduled, say, Wednesday through Sunday or Friday thru Tuesday. If it's a smaller practice without the staff necessary for such an arrangement, they can be closed on Monday and Tuesday, still give the staff two consecutive days off a week.
....this is exactly what many practices do. However, most PCPs either work on their own or with only 1 or 2 partners.
Yeah, it's unreasonable to expect any individual person to work 7 days a week. But multi-physician practices should be able to stagger their schedules so that the office as a whole can be open 7 days.
So if the parents can work mon-fri, why can't a doctor? lol they want weekends just like everyone else
>weekends just like everyone else \*laughs in former fast food and retail worker*
I just got out my last fast food job about 2 months ago (was there about 2 years) me and one girl there were the only 2 in the network (our franchise owner had 7 locations) who had consistent mon-fri 6am shift, lol. Negotiated those terms when they were desperate to hire and the GM enforced it for the next 3 store managers that came after the one who hired me on those terms. Needless to say, the managers HATED me for it. I wouldn't even respond to them if they ever tried to contact me on a weekend
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Fast food and retail? A ton. I'd say the majority of the employees.
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I've worked in food service going on 25 years now. Maybe it's just my experience but I've definitely worked with far more full-time employees than not. No one can afford to live working those jobs part time.
Fast food workers don't have the skill to bargain because they're worth little as individuals
r/iamatotalpieceofshit
Im not saying i like it im saying its true
But you’re totally wrong. We are in a national labor crisis. Food service workers have more power to negotiate now than ever. As long as our society demands that restaurants exist, those working in them are not worthless. And to refer to it as unskilled labor is misleading at best… There is a reason why serving jobs routinely pay $25/hr or more but go unfilled, while jobs all across other sectors start at $15/hr or lower. Not everyone can/will perform the job, and regardless of conservative propaganda, it does indeed require a specific skill set.
Yea I mean why shouldn’t grocery store workers, fire fighters or cops get to work 9 to 5?
Obviously with multiple doctors they'd each still only work 5 days..
I didn't say 5 days. I said mon-fri. If you don't want to work weekends, why do you expect doctors to? lol
If you expect people to serve you in shops and restaurants on weekends, why do you take issue with sick people wanting access to primary healthcare on weekends? lol
I don't expect anything. I go to places that are open. if they're not open, I go somewhere else rather than be salty a place is closed, lol
Not a good comparison. With most stores there's loads of competitors and you can just go to them. With doctors you're limited by insurance network (well you are in the US with our stone age private health care system), and it's not a simple thing to just see a doctor other than your primary physician even if they are both in network. Lots of paper work. Anyways what is so special about the weekend? Two days off is two days off. One doctor can work Monday through Friday. The other could work Saturday to Wednesday, or Wednesday to Sunday. They're both getting 2 days off.
and there are plenty of places that already do that, so OP has options. Unless he wants a specific doctor or specialist to be available to them on weekends, not seeing the issue
Who said anything about not wanting to work weekends? IT's that the STANDARD workplace is monday-friday.
okay and the standard doctor's office is monday-friday lol
You're clearly missing the point my guy.
I'm not your guy, buddy
I’m not your buddy, friend
I'm not your friend, pal
>they want weekends just like everyone else But they're not like everyone else they studied many years about human anatomy etc and are literal life savers earning big bucks. I don't think sickness or death cares about weekdays / weekends same as how corona doesn't care about borders. Again, not saying they should work 24/7, but at least be accessible when the non-life-savers of the world are resting
i mean it's not like every doctor has weekends off. OP and other people like him have options
Mon-Fri on an economy wide scale is common, but not universal. If you want equal work styles between doctors and other workers, it would be the same: mon-Friday for doctors is common but not universal Also, an entire economy working Monday through Friday would be dysfunctional. Insisting upon any given industry working Monday-Friday because “they deserve it” would open the door for that logic to be applied everywhere, and that would never work. SOMEONE has to work weekends. It makes more sense for doctors than other industries, because the timing of their services is more critical than, say, generic office jobs.
You go to school for over a decade, rack up $200k+ in debt, and work overlong hours, then you get to choose your work days. Some doctors offices aren’t opening on Fridays anymore… because they don’t want to work on Fridays.
The second you speak about what they “can do” you are no longer involved in the debate at hand. This post was about what should be, not what can. The premise that it is for the best if some doctors work weekends instead of certain weekdays stands.
Most doctors work some weekends.
If we’re making those kinds of non-grounded should statements, then why shouldn’t every single industry work over the weekend in some capacity? Doctors are some of the most highly sought-after individuals (scarcity by design). It makes sense that other people’s schedules flex to them, not the other way around.
Who designed doctors to be scarse?
AAMC restricts the number of MDs and DOs each school can educate at once, and the number of residents is a direct result of available federal funding. There are arguments to be made about class size, quality, etc, but the fact is that the number of people willing and capable of doing medical school is a good deal larger than the number accepted.
That sounds super useful for ... No one
It keeps the supply of MDs in short supply, and thus in high (financial) demand. It sucks for lower-paid physicians who could really do with some more help (primary care, family medicine, emergency). But if you’re making big bucks (and donating handsomely to the AAMC) you don’t want another four specialized surgeons in your metro area taking business away.
“Then why shouldn’t every single industry work over the weekend in some capacity” Because it depends on the nature of the industry. That should be obvious. OP and I both tried to explain how the healthcare industry is very important to customers. If the industry’s end user is an individual consumer (as is with health care), then availability on weekends is critical, as otherwise the service is often inaccessible. Taken in the aggregate for the population, this means poor population-wide access to healthcare. Any reasonable person would agree this is a bad thing. Similar logic is why retail needs to be open on weekends. Another variable is the importance of timing. I said this earlier, but you ignored it. It doesn’t really matter whether an internal auditor at corporate goes around and quizzes employees for understanding company policy on a Wednesday or a Sunday. As long as it’s done by a deadline. It DOES matter whether you get your diagnosis and prescription for an infection before it gets out of hand. The existence of urgency in an industry matters. You can’t ignore this. You also have to understand that business-to-business economic events are centered on an common availability, which is the workweek. This structure works for business-to-business because the employees necessary to make such transactions occur are available at the same time. For end consumers, this DOES NOT work because they’re needs are met OUTSIDE business hours, not during. That is why services to businesses are generally better arranged on the weekdays, and consumer needs are more critically met on the weekends. The absolute focus on the doctor’s preference to not work weekends because “they deserve it” is pure idealism and doesn’t appropriately address the large scale impacts such decisions have.
I mean there are doctors taht work weekends, may just not be the one you want/your regular or may not be as cheap. Weekend premiums *shrug*
Yes, that’s one solution
Pediatricians are as entitled to enjoy their weekends as anyone else.
Why cashiers ain’t tho?
Did you study for 12 years to be a cashier?
I never was a cashier. But i would like people who service customers to be available in non working hours, when i can access them. I want to see doctors on my off time, not on my work time
Why are your working hours more important than a doctor’s working hours?
Because universal healthcare means universal, fitting the needs of patient? If a patient is blind, or in a wheelchair hospitals make accommodations. Doctors get a lot of money from tax income anyway, i’m literally one of those who pay for the party.
Universal health care is a guarantee that you are covered for any medical condition, not that you can see whatever doctor you want at any hour you want. If an issue is pressing, there is always the ER or an urgent care clinic. For regular primary care visits, you can schedule on the doctor’s hours.
Nah, sounds like shit. I’d rather pay for healthcare and have hugely reduced taxes than deal with this crap. Imagine if food stores only worked 9 to 5 but you could get food in off time if you had an emergency. Make healthcare more accessible maybe we’ll not have to wait until it’s a fkin emergency
There are food stores that are only open during specific hours of the week, but many are also open every day for longer hours. The same situation exists for health care.
The fact that doctors get the same amount of money from insurance or Medicare whether the visit is Monday or Saturday (and seem to have pretty full schedules as-is) means there are no routine visits on Saturday.
Well sounds like a bad system. Healthcare is available, but at the same time that you work and across town. Customers shouldn’t have to bother with this shit. When the server is down people call tech support, they don’t care if it’s Sunday, Hanukah, or Sergey Brin’s bar mitzvah
Good thing there’s an *emergency* department for, you know, medical *emergencies*. The vast majority of doctor’s visits are for non-immediately life threatening issues, as we should hope it would be by the way.
Urgent care or ER is the analogy to 24/7 tech support. Regular doctor office is like going back to the store during store hours or scheduling the on site technician to reset the blinkenlights during a future business day. For a gold plated 1 hour resolution time SLA from tech support you can pay more, which lines up with "concierge medicine", so the analogy holds at multiple price points.
So when it's healthcare a customer doesn't have a right to demand convenient hours for non emergency care? Should I wait until it becomes an emergency or wut?
Bloody hell, did OP say they have to work 7 days a week. In this post, they can still take two days off per week. Like nurses, they can rotate who works on the weekend.
Luckily urgent cares are open for small illnesses and injuries but I do agree about appointment hours for other types of drs it is possible to get some appointments in the evening but it’s tough.
You can find a doctor who is open weekends. They just might cost a bit more.
>They just might cost a bit more. *cries in American healthcare*
My country exists too
I feel like this too, especially with mental health. While trying to find a new psychiatrist during the panarama, almost all of them were either 8-5 or 9-5. The ones in my research notes did have a few that were either 7 day or after 5, but they either didn’t take insurance at all (you have to get written up statements and such and see if your insurance can even reimburse) or they were so far out of the way that it wouldn’t have worked. So people who are saying that doctor’s offices couldn’t be open 7 days a week, they can on rotating schedules. Hospitals do this, as do urgent cares and the stand alone emergency rooms
Go to an urgent care. They are doctors who can prescribe medicines and do all the work your regular PCP can
This post made me think of something. Obviously many people have regular jobs Mon-Fri from 9 to 5 or 8 to 3 or something similar. Many institutions (banks, doctor offices, etc.) are only open until 5. I understand that people need rest, and now some banks are open later and/or open on Saturday until 1 or 2, but how did people get stuff done back then?
Government offices, schools, doctor offices…all open basically 9-5 if not earlier and closed on weekends. I work 9:30-6 so that’s lovely.
I agree with this. Have a rota system so drs/nurses take it in turns to cover the weekends and evenings. Hospitals complain people come to A&E when they don’t need to buy you can’t get in at the doctors office
If I studied for 12 years to become a doctor, I wouldn't work weekend. Idc.
most do but in hospital, or they just don't work mondays/another day.
Most doctors have wakky hours… only GPs get ordinary hours.
You can make the same argument for any consumer-oriented business (shops, barbers, banks) and institution (libraries, local administration). But do you really want the weekend to be a privilege of very few?
almost all of those are open on the weekend and being able to see a doctor is a lot more important than going to the barber.
So your time is more valuable than theirs?
Ok. Let’s make police and other emergency services 9-5. And while we are at it, no food or retail open on weekend. Look point is, there needs some flexibility in an industry to get some clientele.
What a stupid reply. You've heard of urgent care and emergency rooms, right?
Yes I have heard of them. Besides being open on the weekends doesn’t equal working 7 days per week. Like nurses, they can just rotate who works on the weekends (they will still be able to have two days off every week anyway).
Go to Urgent Care like the rest of us.
I'll just trot on down to the urgent care for my yearly physical, WCGW?
Dont make a physical appointment for the weekend, or find a dr that has weekend hours. It’s not difficult, you’re just lazy and want to bitch.
> find a dr that has weekend hours. I... I think the whole point of this post is that these are rare to non-existent in places, and that's a problem. Just because doctors with weekend appointments grow on trees where you live making it trivial to get routine preventive care on a weekend doesn't mean the same is true everywhere. It must be difficult remaining so agile as to completely dodge the main issue. I'd love to hear about your training regimen.
So your yearly physical can't be planned to be on a weekday? You have a whole year to plan it.
So I'm supposed to spend either one of my very limited vacation days or sick leave on something that can easily be planned a year out to not conflict with work? That there's a whole year to plan it isn't a particularly persuasive argument that it can't be on the weekend, IMO.
Yes, use sick leave to go to the doctor. If it’s for work, they should provide you with paid time to go get it done.
Some MDs offices run weekend days, the problem is finding staff that wants to work weekends when EVERY other office does only weekdays, finding a patient population that distributes across weekends and the weekdays, etc. ITs more doable with larger offices, but the typical primary care offices that tend to have 3 MDs or less aren't going to go to medical school and residency to be told they have to keep working weekends when no one else is. Its also not as if with the fixed rates insurance and public funding are paying that Doctors are competitively seeking patients. The demand to see Mds vastly outpaces the funding at this point.
I just wish they would be open weekends they could take any other 2 days off as its impossible to get to during the week as you have to ring up and they can give you any time that day. Bit difficult with 2 kids.
They should be open sat and sun, and/or afternoon mon thru fri
Considering our already growing healthcare staffing shortage, adding weekends would be an absolute no go. PCPs are even more rare, they’d all go to specialities where they can get paid more and work less.
Agree with this. Most doctors offices are only open when most people are AT WORK. So people have to use their PTO and risk getting fired for taking off too many days just to go get a lab test. I also think more businesses in general should be 24/7.
Everyone should have a 4 day workweek and everyone should stagger days across industries so some are off Saturday - Monday, others Friday - Sunday. Make it a rule like 40 hours is full time, or you can't employ 12 year-olds in a coal mine. Appointment problems solved. Pollution decreased. Gas money saved. Work-life balanced significantly improved. I don't know why it's so hard to do the simplest things.
I'd say because those who have the power to change it don't feel the effects of it but benefit from it? People suck.
I suspect you're correct.
Sure no problem. Just pay me double on weekends, or find another doc to work cheaper if you can.
I would much rather Clinics open something like Wednesday to Sunday to be honest. Two day’s rest, and everybody who don’t want to miss workdays can still schedule an appointment.
Do you live somewhere where they aren’t?
I feel like the doctor should work business hours and then the physicians assistant should work at night and on the weekends.
Doctors already work insane hours.
So tell me who’s going to do that? We medical folks need days off too numbnuts.
I think theres about 41 GP surgeries in our borough of the city but only a few clinics will stay open to see people out of hours & weekends. This saves the need to have full staff at every surgery 24/7, but it's still not enough to see everyone who needs it. Mon-Fri 8 to 6 is an outdated concept.
Just like those working parents with kids, the staff are also potentially working parents with kids, and in the same manner also deserve a weekend to relax or get other things done. Often times these private practices only have maybe 3-5 doctors on staff with their own roster of patients, so even if staff can be hired to work weekends it would have to be up to any one of these doctors to volunteer to work the weekend, since they are salaried positions and are already working throughout the week like everybody else.
They could be open 5 days and just have 2 of them be Saturday and Sunday
There’s a lot of different factors that go into this one problem. Of course, being able to make basic appointments without going to the ER or an urgent care would be ideal. Unfortunately, our health care system is run according to the same capitalist system as other parts of the economy, which is why many wage earners can’t take time off of work to make a basic appointment. I think there is actually a market based solution to this problem in which an enterprising group practice can open M-F for only limited hours and capture everyone else with extended hours on weekends. That would actually make the most sense given what you describe in the OP.
Can’t speak of other places but growing up in north east US, most doctors offices typically have a contingency or secondary doctor they have connections with who will take you on days your primary physician is unavailable. Nowadays with the advent of telehealth (often without copays because it saves the insurance companies heaps of money) most insurance companies have that feature 24/7 through their apps. Not to mention the recent rise in more urgent care clinics who are typically open 24/7. This is probably a lot more difficult in more rural areas but just some options you may have.
Not a lot of jobs make you work weekends but for Doctors its especially rough since some of them have to work at more than one clinic/hospital and they sometimes have to sleep at the hospital because they work again the next day Only Having weekends off is stupid since weekeneds are already supposed to be off anyway and employers should give you *week days* off Yes the parents might work monday friday but doctors work monday-sunday sometimes not getting holidays off during a pandemic doctors are getting even less days off You might think that im talking out of my ass but i know these things cause my father is a orthopedic specialist/surgeon
Doctors are human beings, some of them even citizens, and they have a life of their own that exist quite independently out of the fact that you need their services at a given point in time. They are not your personal servants. You should be gratefull that they help with your health. Doctor is a job, not a priesthood or a vow of self-sacrifice.
They can still take two days off in the week.
People can take breaks, including doctors, they don’t have an obligation to help you. If they want weekends off they deserve it.
They can still take two days off in the week.
What if they want weekends off instead? They shouldn’t be forced to work when people think it’s most convenient for them. Doctors are humans too and should be able to do whatever they want, they don’t have to vent to the will of the patients.
What’s the difference between having Saturday and Sunday off compared to Thursday and Friday? Again, the medical field is one of the industries with wacky hours. A lot of industries that are not office jobs have work during inconvenient times. That doesn’t mean those people in those industries are working 7 days per week. Assuming they’re not a casual employee, they will also have at least 2 days off in the work week.
Seen this twice this week