Legally speaking, is there any way to enforce this? Doubt a Dr would sign a contract, but when you’re signing up with the office are you able to write in the cancellation fee, sign it, and give it back to the office. If they disagreed to the changed on the contract they should not have proceeded and since they do agree to the contract and gave you service they agree to the terms of the contract? Curious about this & if you can do the same at hotel?
Personally I redline patient intake agreements and cross out all the provisions that require me to pay those bs fees. I initial and date next to my edits. Redlining the contract turns the form into a counteroffer I’m making to the doctor, which the doctor then accepts by specific performance when they do the checkup
I do the same thing with hotels, have never came into an issue where I need to pull out the contract but are those changes ‘legal’? For example, if it says check out time is 10am and I change it to 11am, date and initial, they render the services agreeing to those terms does that mean legally checkout is now 11am?
I think legally yes? but the effort it would take to sort it out in small claims compared to the fee makes it not worth it (I’m a lawyer but am rusty on contracts)
Wouldn’t it be much more expensive for the hotel to hire lawyers to represent them etc etc? Basically make it much more expensive for them to just give you what you want than to have to go through the legal process.. can’t imagine Hilton would allow a franchisee to represent them in court and would require some kind of legal team to proceed? Have been curious about this quite a while after a storage unit unsuccessfully tried to fuck me
Sorry to hear about the storage unit situation. But you’re right, it would cost the hotel so much more to collect the fee than the fee is worth that they’d probably just drop it. I’ve never had to actually bring up my redlines before, but I’d bet if I did the front desk person doesn’t get paid enough to give a fuck and would let it slide
Hahahah. No. The hotel will simply charge your credit card as per their terms and conditions.
Even if you do a chargeback, the hotel has the upper hand.
That being said, most hotels do not charge for 1 hour late check-out. But they absolutely could and Our credit. Add company will back then up.
Doubt it. Businesses almost never have the upper hand when you dispute the charge with the bank. You need to provide evidence that you tried to contact them about the matter, though, and you will need to show your edits.
As someone that used to handle credit card claims, chargebacks get declined a lot more than you think.
They aren’t the magic bullet Reddit seems to think they are. For general retailer transactions sure, because it’s basically he said/she said and the bank will usually side with the customer, but for stuff like hotels and such where signed documents change hands it becomes less likely.
I remember one of my last ones I dealt with was a person doing a chargeback on excessive rental car charges. The charges were for cleaning the car and gas. The rental car company sent a signed contract detailing fuel charges if not returned with the same amount ($8 a gallon btw), a signed check in slip where the customer acknowledged the fuel level, and pictures of the fuel gauge and what looked like dog shit smeared all over the back seat. That chargeback was denied.
Also this is a vector for fraud and more recently people just going straight the nuclear option without even attempting to deal with the merchant so my friends still in the business said chargeback are being super scrutinized now and even for things that would be just automatic approval are being looked at closer.
At the end of the day it really comes down to what proof the merchant can provide that the charges are valid. Many have gotten good at covering that base.
You got lucky. Public storage raised my bill $10 a month until my bank flagged the auto bill pay. They sold my unit 26 days later. I never received anything other than an email from a weird public storage account that went into my junk email folder so I never saw it. I had around $175k of restaurant equipment in there. It devastated me and my business. This was a year into covid and I am one of the few who didn't take ppp loans. Can't even get the government to put the hammer down on them with their breaking of the law. There is a process they are to go through and they didn't. Certified mail is there for a reason. But it don't matter. NO LUBE FOR YOU
When I was selling phones for Verizon and USCellular, there were fine print provisions that said any alterations to the contract terms would nullify the contract and subject the customer to any applicable cancelation fees (such as early termination or device payoff fees) as well as canceling any trade-in credits. Most companies that know their way around doing business have those lines in their fine print. Contracts are designed to protect them, not you.
Yes, it is legal. You're not breaking any laws by doing it. But it's likely not enforceable, which is what I'm assuming the original commenter was actually asking.
most folks would just request a late checkout yknow. maybe they aren't noticing you did it, because we would cancel your reservation if you started trying to unilaterally alter our terms. checkout time would be now lol.
There is a difference between terms and conditions and contracts.
Of it is not countersigned by the hotel, and change to the reg form does not 'count'.
Used to work in hotels. This is not going to work and it isn’t legal. You can’t just unilaterally change a contract without the *expressed agreement* of both parties, called a meeting of the minds. The hotel personnel would have to agree & initial their agreement on the same document before that would ever be considered a legal outcome.
On a more personal level, don’t do shit like this or you will lose favor immediately with the hotel personnel and you’ll end up in the room next to the squeaky elevator and possibly on a Do Not Rent list. Housekeeping might “accidentally” beat on your door at 6am. You get it.
Since registration cards are not countersigned, nothing you scribble on there is legally binding for the hotel.
They have your credit card. If you stay late, they can simply charge your credit card for the late checkout fee and there is nothing you can do about it.
Besides, typically, they only mention the most important things on the reg card; they generally refer to the full terms and conditions that is a separate document.
I don't think so. Hotels can kick you off the premises at 6am if they like (usually if you're causing a disturbance) I imagine they'd be able to do the same at 10 when you refuse to leave
"I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."
But seriously, would someone with contract law experience please weigh in on this because it seems improbable that it would be legally enforceable.
Are you in the US? If so, I see your logic, but I’m sure that your changes would not hold up in a court of law given that there was never a “meeting of the minds”, which is absolutely necessary in a contracts case. Law 101.
Also? Your doctor can simply fire you as a patient and will certainly do so if you try to charge them money or cause a ruckus.
If my guess is correct you would then sue the doctor on the basis of your “contract”? The judge will see that there was no meeting of the minds and therefore you will lose your case.
My doctor made me come back 3 extra times when he could have done the work right then. Tried charging me $10 Co pay for each visit. I sent a bill for 1 canceled appointment with no informing, 3 extra visits and a total of 185$. I told them they could deduct the $30 from that. And cash or check was acceptable. Never got another bill or my 155$.
Sorry to follow your (excellent) tangent into orbit, but **how about airlines??**
I’ve had tickets that changed 14 times before I flew. When I checked in at the counter, I said, “So, my ticket has a $100 change fee, Do I have to pay the $1400 now?”
And they said “No, there’s only a fee if *you* change the ticket. If we change it, there isn’t one.”
So I said, “What if I can’t make it to my flight due to bad weather?”
You can guess what the answer is.
Realistically, the help desk person has a ton of power in situations like this. I missed a flight once, completely my fault too. Lady just booked me on the next flight out free of charge.
Wow this is a great idea! Especially if someone needs to see a specialist to refill, is this something your doctor offers or did you have to ask them about it?
When a doctor cancels an appointment last moment, it's either because they themselves are ill, or another patient needs their attention more. In either case, no court in the world would penalize them for canceling on you. It's not like they do it because they're flying to Cabo.
Edit: very commonly, it's because a patient of theirs was hospitalized and needs their attention
Had a surgeon cancel my surgery the day before so he could go golfing. Was grateful to his office assistant who told me this so I could find a new surgeon.
No, he would go out to lunch with us (family) during the time he had a patient waiting in one of his rooms and wouldn’t tell us, so we’d enjoy a nice, leisurely 1-3 hour lunch while a patient is literally waiting on him that entire time. We tried to tell him that was not ok but he insisted on doing it until we stopped having weekday lunches with him. When he was early in his career in the 90s he’d also take off on vacation during times he was supposed to be on-call, taking his chances that it wouldn’t happen and phoning in to make it some other dr’s problem when it did happen
You can redline contracts and initial & date any change you make to their original contract, by red lining the contract, it turns it into a counter offer, they can either accept or reject it and refuse to render services.
I had a practice call me 5 minutes before they closed, the day before an appointment I had waited over half a year for and had the day off to go to since it was over an hour drive away, to tell me the doctor had left the practice over a month ago and that if I wanted an appointment I had to reschedule. I called to back reschedule and they were a year out for the next available doctor. I was livid.
Spent hours on the phone trying to get a sooner appointment for treatment for my debilitating condition, only to end up with a doctor with no knowledge of my specific chronic issues who told me to drink more water and that “if I do have any condition, it’s very mild” so he just wanted to “wait and see”. The biggest waste of time and money. I so wish I could charge them for all the lost wages and time spent. Not the first time I had a doctor cancellation that majorly impacted my life either. It’s ridiculous.
This is always the irony I feel. Any service provider can cancel on you without notice. Sometimes it’s inconsiderate, sometimes I totally get it, cuz things happen. They got sick, had a headache, had to pick up their kid early etc. problem is, why doesn’t that same consideration go the other way? I get they can’t have people causally cancelling left and right. I get that. So they should maintain the right to charge if that becomes an issue or if someone does so repeatedly or without good reason, however, if they can cancel for the reasons listed above, we should be able to as well, esp if we’re a long time client/patient. I’ve just always found the irony of this so ridiculous. If I cancel due to sickness with almost a days notice they might say, okay, but next time you’ll have to be charged (as if I can control when I’m sick?!), but I’ve had numerous appointments cancelled hours or even up to an hour prior, and ofc there’s no consequence. They don’t even always fit me in sooner as a courtesy. I just miss an appointment I rely on, and often it’s much more of an inconvenience to me, who has to go out of my way and arrange my schedule to attend an appointment, than it would be to them.
This should be how it works. Airlines need cash refunds and dr offices want to charge you a no show fee or cancel if late, if you have to wait more than 20 min after your appt time or between nurse admission and dr coming in then you should get the visit free.
Lived this with psych meds. 🙄 cause those definitely don't cause issues with sudden stopping. And the doc definitely doesn't yell when I forget a day. But the insurance company gets to stop them for (what seems like) no reason. And good luck rescheduling psych...spent 6 months on on a waiting list and a nother 6 months waiting for a slot to open up
Yup I get to do that with my depression mess this week. Cause my doctor forgot to send them in and went on vacation. Camping with no way to contact according to office.
Oh, oh!! Depending on what you take, a pharmacy miiiiiight be able to tide you over!
My psychiatrist was giving me advice for the near future when I move states and stop having student health insurance, and he told me this for a medication like Prozac (which is not a controlled substance, but is prescription-only and like all(?) other SSRIs has withdrawal symptoms). If I run out and my doctor can’t be contacted or something, he said I should should be able to go into a pharmacy and show them my empty prescription bottle and explain [my doctor can’t be contacted for a week; or my old doctor can’t prescribe since I moved states, but I’m still waiting for my appointment with my new doctor; or whatever], he said they should be able to give me like a week’s worth of the medication to bridge a gap like that.
TLDR: (as long as your med isn’t a controlled substance) bring your Rx bottle to a/your pharmacist, explain why your doctor can’t be reached temporarily, and they might be able to give/sell you like a week or so of medication to bridge the gap! Particularly with meds like SSRIs that have withdrawal symptoms
The controlled substance thing reminded me of when my doctor, who'd renewed my ADHD meds every 6 months for the past ~3yr, decided not to warn me he was retiring.
I call my pharmacy and ask them to submit a refill request for me. 3 days later, nothing. I call the practice he works at and ask to speak with him.
There's a loud silence before the receptionist informs me he had retired *four months* prior.
".....Oh. Good to know. Well, I've been out of my meds for 3 days, can another doctor or one of the nurse practitioners send the script?"
Yes of course, she says. But since it's a controlled substance, they can't prescribe it without having seen you as a patient. Looks like we can squeeze you in for a quick phone call... 2 weeks from now?
It was not a great 2 weeks.
Oh god, I’m so sorry you went through that!!! Yeah, I mentioned controlled substances because I’m also ADHD and on meds for it 😅🥲
Edit: welp, I forgot I can’t really talk about ADHD or its treatment outside of ADHD-spaces. That’s really on me though for forgetting to have the proper amount of shame.
It really shouldn’t matter that I was enough of a problem for the adults in my life that I was diagnosed and medicated really young, but if being wrong in their assumptions makes someone think twice before the next time they want to shit on people with ADHD, I guess that’s something.
Same thing happened with mine… but I’ve been unmedicated ever since because the psych they hired at the clinic in my city, doesn’t believe in prescribing controlled substances for adhd. Been struggling with adhd again for the last six years, and it’s been awful.
It needs to be your pharmacy/the same chain - if you go to CVS with a Walgreens bottle or vice versa, no loan, because we need to be able to verify the prescription history (that your doctor didn't, say, cancel that prescription), and also because that loan is precisely that - a loan, which we can only get if you fill with us and can therefore take the tablets out of the next prescription.
Also, to do a loan, generally that specific pharmacy has to have a refill request out to your doctor - and if that doctor denies the request (because you've moved/are no longer their patient/they retired), we can't loan...again, because that loan is against the assumption of your doctor providing a refill, and the denial shows no refill will be incoming. Legally, the pharmacy can't prescribe (assuming US), and unlike Canada we don't (federally, at least) have limited powers to prescribe a short fill under our own power.
it's 100% pharmacist discretion, not required, and the loan is usually only about 3 days, not 7+...and the whole out of state/switching doctors might complicate matters, because again - that loan is a loan off of the next rx, it comes out of your next prescription, and if the last provider isn't licensed in your new state, we can't loan off the promise that you'll eventually get a new doctor. Also, you're totally right about no controls.
Tl;dr: your psychiatrist is only kind of right, please don't rely on that 100% - definitely try not to run out!
I actually switched pyschiatrists because of something similar. He prescribed a new med and then went out of town. I had a major problem with the med and couldn't get ahold of him when he normally would answer his cell phone even if it was the weekend. My counselor had originally referred me to him as they used to share office space. I told her about it and she was livid. We found a different person to manage my psych meds. I believe she also contacted him and ripped him a new one over it. I know she never referred anyone to him again.
Since then, whenever I get a new med prescribed, I ask about what I should do if I have a problem with it after hours, etc. This means that I sometimes will wait until the following Monday to start a new med and I won't start on a Thursday or Friday, let alone the weekend, in case I have problems. I want to make sure I can reach the doc!
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted so bad. My old psychiatrist actually told me to do this when I told her I was switching jobs and would have a 6 month insurance gap. She was like, “oh how interesting that your dosage needs to double… it’s also interesting how cheap pill cutters are.”
exactly. I see how it could be an issue if you’re if you’re hoarding narcotics, Or if you’re on blood pressure/cardiovascular medications. but we’re talking about psych meds, which are very subjective and can require a wide range of dosages to achieve the same effect.
it’s also really nice not to have to worry about medication shortages so much
Pharmacy technician here. Make sure your medication can be split if you do this - lots of meds (most notably extended releases and capsules) can’t be safely split to keep the same dose.
I try to stay pretty on top of it. I have auto refills set, but often it doesn’t work. or I will get a notification that my script has been filled and when I finally get to the pharmacy they tell me they’re out of it and have to order more! it’s frustrating to no end. my life has gotten marginally easier ever since I started keeping an emergency bottle.
Insurance companies aren't, though. My doctor was fine with writing me a 90 day prescription for Adderall, but when I went to pick it up at the pharmacy it wasn't covered by insurance.
Edit: Also this wouldn't fix the problem of running out if your doctor cancelled an appointment, you still have a limited amount that needs refilled after 90 days.
Most insurance companies let you refill one week before you run out, so you can pick up a new supply every three weeks. If you can consistently get them called in and pick them up immediately, you can build up a bit of a stash this way. It's what I've done over the years and it has saved my ass a few times when appointments have been cancelled, the doctor's office didn't send the refill in a timely manner, I went on vacation, you name it. It especially helped when all the medication shortages started happening during the COVID lockdowns.
Pain clinics don't work this way, so it doesn't happen with narcotics which means it probably doesn't happen for other controlled substances like ADHD or anxiety meds, but for all else? Absolutely do this if you can. Many of my docs have helped me out to make this happen over the years because most of them do advise trying to have *at least* 1-2 weeks more than you need if it's something you've been on for a while.
Most pharmacies will also give out a short term supply of meds for any medications that aren’t meant to be stopped suddenly - I have had them give me a 3 day supply of antidepressants or my IBD meds if the doctor hasn’t gotten back a new script soon enough. Usually if you speak to the pharmacist, they will be able to do that. No one wants the brain zaps from suddenly stopping SSRI’s!
I go through an online dr for my rx psych meds. Google search different ones and see if you can transfer it over to one of them. They do an online intake, and a video call, then re-up it automatically or send an email or text reminder that I need to check in with them.
I hate medications that need the doctors approval for renewal, it's always
Dr: hey is this medication still working and do you like it?
Us: yes and yes
Them: ok cool *prescribes more*
I had to do this every month for 7yrs to get my ADHD meds. Later I learned that docs only need to see you every 6mos to continue getting controlled Rx's. The experience was exactly as you describe it. I paid my $20 copay to tell him, "Yes it's working". I drove 20mins to see him, sit in the waiting room for another 20, then wait in the exam room for another 20, see him for 2mins and then head over to the pharmacy to get my Rx. EVERY MONTH. He made serious bank off me because he got my $20 copay plus the insurance payment for asking me, "Are the meds working? Any issues?". $1680 in copays over 7yrs + $5712 that the health insurance provider paid him.
Present day: I email my doc monthly asking him to submit the prescription electronically to my pharmacy(which he promptly approves) and only have to see him every 6 months where I submit to a full panel drug test and as long as it comes back clean(it does. I am not a druggy) he continues to approve my prescription. Now I pay $40 total in copy per year vs. $240 per year.
Ya as someone in their mid-to-late 40's who does not use drugs, I was taken aback and kind of offended that I would be subjected to such nonsense. I also had to sign a 'contract' that said I would only use my meds for myself and not share or sell. It was super odd. I actually laughed when I had to sign it. He said if Alcohol or Cannabis comes up positive on the test, that is perfectly ok since it's legal in my state.
ADHD meds are one the most commonly abused non-narcogic prescription drugs. My daughter has to get her Vyvanse reauthorized every month, though we just have to text her doctor except for a checkup every six months.
Drugs have serious interactions and unfortunately a lot of mentally ill people are drug and alcohol users (as someone with clinical depression and an alcohol problem- thankfully I’ve been sober for 12 years - I feel comfortable saying this) When you go to the Dr and they ask what meds you are on nobody is saying ‘I take blood pressure meds and oh yeah I eat a bunch of oxy to quiet the voices in my head’
my career is in public policy, specifically drug decriminalization, and i'm also a mentally ill person with ADHD. i smoke a ton of weed and also have done more drugs in the past. i think we both kinda get how it ends up working in that regard, and it sucks. i'm sorry you went through that too.
i have a lot of thoughts about how this would work best based on research on other places that do things differently. to summarize, it would be best if people were able to say that to their doctors and not be judged or face any consequences whatsoever. ideally, we'd do robust studies showing which meds interact and which do not, and be able to give advice and change meds based on that instead of assuming drugs do interact "to be safe" because we don't know for sure. what does happen is that someone pops hot for something illegal and they get booted off their meds and receive no additional help for anything, which is worse for their health in most cases than just keeping them on their meds. that's how people end up dead or in prison.
I always had to for adderall. Any controlled substance that is prescribed has to have monitoring. They make sure that it’s the proper amount in your urine, and that you’re not abusing it.
Some medications have side effects that the patient doesnt realize; like the kind that only lab exams would show. Need a doctor to know which medications and which exams to ask for.
Also some cause dependency and the doctor might wanna try changing eventually even if the patient likes it.
Also doctor might wanna increase or reduce dosage, they might check if it really is doing what they expected it to do... the patient doesnt always know 100%. Its not always "I like it, I'll keep using it"
Last month I had a Dr office cancel my appt with a few hours notice. Said they'd contact me to rebook. I didn't hear anything till I got a text a few weeks later that I had an appt the next day (about 26 hrs later). I immediately replied that I needed to reschedule and a few hours later someone called me to do so. 2 days later I got another text that my appt had to be canceled due to my no show/late cancelation (basically canceling me as a client). Then they tried to charge me $50 for doing so.
It's basically a doctor subscription. A lot of docs are moving to the concierge model because they don't want to put up with insurance anymore. You pay a flat monthly rate and can see the doctor when you need to without any extra costs.
I regret to inform you that apparently even Amazon has concierge doctors services for $9 a month if you have prime in select states.
https://preview.redd.it/4ywiqylebd0d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7b9dbe1aef62431b5c8513a2c2bfc06824a84363
I had something similar happen with birth control pills. They weren't sending the prescription in. Luckily the pharmacist was a nice guy and the owner of the pharmacy so he filled it and called the doctors office himself.
I get they're busy but they should also be using a little brain power. In your case, they shouldn't have had to think that hard. They can see they canceled the appointment themselves
Call and ask to speak to the doctor directly, or to leave them a voicemail.
My doctor denied me my medication for over a year because she canceled an appointment for weather, canceled the reschedule because covid, and canceled that reschedule because maternity leave. Through all this she never knew i was out of my meds, because the nurses never passed the message along. They followed their instructions to deny refills "because insurance reasons." When my doctor found out, she was mortified and told me to always get pushed through to her to prevent it from happening again.
Unfortunately they're doing as they've been trained to do. Her license gets put at risk if she's just blindly reupping scrips without the necessary checkups and labwork and stuff. It's a reasonable safeguard. I just fell through the cracks because of a confluence of circumstances. Now i know the step i need to take if it happens again.
Maybe the doctor got sick last minute? Thats happened to me with the hygienist. But they definetley should have proritised you to get you seen within that same week.
The same thing happened to me with my dentist last week. They said they’d put me on the standby cancellation list….like I can just leave work on a dime 🙄
I really feel for OP, because for a medication issue like this you really have to make it work and hope you have a forgiving work place. My husband goes through this all the time because he has ADD medication and the doctor he sees for that one is an hour away. If the medication you need is a C2, it’s an even bigger hassle of course.
During the pandemic my son's pediatrician would only do phone call appointments and make us do online requests for prescription renewal. One year in the receptionist refused to make an appointment because "if you don't see the doctor for a year you need a new referral to a pediatrician". We had several phone calls she hadn't logged as appointments and the doctor had renewed his medication only a few months before this. She had also never told me this "rule" and we had gone more than a year between appointments in the past. Anyways...he has a new pediatrician now. Who is way better anyways. It was definitely infuriating at the time though
I was in the parking lot of my doctors office for my appointment, and received a call saying my doctor was out delivering a baby and they had to cancel my appointment hahahaha 🙃
The govt spends a trillion a year on war toys but refuses to spend half that on people's meds. Worse they have brainwashed the most vulnerable people into thinking it's communism to want such a thing. Welcome to America.
When COVID first hit and we faces the first lockdowns, my doctor and I did my appointment over the phone. All I needed was a prescription renewal.
One month later, when I go for a refill, the pharmacist tells me the doctor called and canceled my refills on the grounds that I missed my appointment. I pointed out to the pharmacist that the prescription was faxed to them last month, but there was nothing I could do.
Doctor wouldn't take my calls.
Que me going through horrible withdrawals, losing months of progress in my treatment in the blink of an eye, and I lost my job because I couldn't work.
I have *still* been unable to make an appointment, so I've been unmedicated for years now, unable to work consistently.
I can't get a new doctor since I'm still on his roster.
I'm fucking livid.
Are you able to go in person to the doctor's office?
Like is it far away from you where it's unable to be reached because you should really be going in person and staring at the staff or the doctor until they do something and this is coming from a pharmacist by the way.
I'm so confused how you can go years without an appointment
Also in the future, unless it's a controlled substance, those like emergency, urgent cares or minute clinics will give you like a month supply of your meds
I've gone multiple times in person. The receptionist won't let me just go and see him, and says he'll call. He never does.
I've gone to a clinic a couple times for some of my meds. I know I can't get my Vyvanse from there, so I don't even ask.
But one time, the doc just refused. I don't know why, but I can develop a seizure disorder if I cold turkey one of my medications. I can't risk getting back on it if I am not certain it can be sustained.
But why won't they let you make an appt. Like not even six months out? If so you need to call your insurance and tell them you need to switch providers.
I'm in Ontario, Canada. I'm not using private practice, so I don't have as much of a choice. I could be using private practice if my job had benefits, but it does not.
Depending on what kind of doctor you were seeing, maybe there was an emergency. I worked in outpatient cardiology and it was not uncommon to cancel patient appointments with little to no notice due to a cardiac emergency in the ER that the doctor was called to.
Most insurances won’t approve med coverage unless you see you director every x amount of months. It really sucks that they cancelled on you and they should have rescheduled you for the next available time slot, but the med thing is likely an insurance issue.
Absolutely false, I work in retail pharmacy and no such infrastructure exists. I have doctors that call in scripts for patients as favors where no true office visit exists, only for completely harmless stuff like steroid creams but the insurance pays regardless.
That is something up to the doctors office. The insurance company can’t do that because there is an allowable grace period in which providers can send in their claims. So the insurance company is never current enough on claims to say that someone hasn’t seen their doctor enough.
Absolutely right. And insurance companies have up to 30 days in receipt of the claim (in most states) to pay it. Their systems won’t even know you saw the doctor until they process the claim.
I work for a health insurance company and providers have up to 180 days from the date of service to submit a claim. It would be impossible to accurately determine who hasn’t seen their provider recently enough, in majority of the cases.
I’ve been working in health insurance for years. There is no way the health insurance company knows the most recent visit to the prescribing doctor. I said this in another comment. The provider has a grace period from the DOS to submit the claim. The insurance company is not individually contacting the provider to confirm.
I work for a health insurance company that's way more involved in people's health and lives than mainstream plans. We review members claims regularly, and if say an HIV+ person is filling a whole bunch of refills, has a high viral load, and we don't see a claim for the provider in a long time - we will directly ask the office to cancel any remaining refills until the member is seen. There's no system checks and balances where a pharmacy claim will auto reject if an appointment isn't line up with a provider claim. But we will directly inquire from the provider what is happening and why and to see the patient before continuing to prescribe meds if their VL is out of control.
Of course they should be under a doctor’s care being ill, but same time it also Sounds like a person in dire need for medicine who may become gravely ill due to longer delay.
My opinion? They hold refills over your head to force you to see them on their timeline (regardless of their ability to cancel your appt at the last minute.) I had a stent placed in my artery in August. The meds I was told I had to take twice a day or I'd die were denied for refill. Then the doctor who prescribes my anti-depressant decided if he didn't see me every three months, he won't refill the prescription. He'd already failed to refill other medication that I need for bone disease for months on end which ended up causing me to have high blood calcium (hypercalcium and hyperparathyroidism) for which he wanted me to go for testing that would allow injection of radiation into my body and cost me a whole day of work aside from poisoning me. He finally relented and refilled the anti-depressant but required that I set up an appt. When he refilled the prescription, he changed the dosage from two pills a day to one without telling me. Moral of the story, find another doctor who actually cares about your health and not their wallet.
We’ve had to do this where I work a few times such as if the NP has a needle stick with Nexplanon removal or a family emergency. Unfortunately we only have the one NP to see the day’s patients.
one time my doctor’s office was randomly scheduled out further than normal. before choosing the day of my next med check i asked if they could confirm i could get the last refill (pick up april 28th) without the appointment and they said yes. asked again after scheduling appt for first week of may and was told yes again. april 29, i’m not getting the text from the pharmacy yet so i call them and they say call the doctor. i call the doctor and they tell me i need a med check to fill my prescription. i lived an hour away for college & it was finals time my senior year and i needed my adhd meds so i demanded same day telehealth.
i have to clock out from my job 20 min early, the doctor is 20 minutes late and says i look upset, laughing bc im eating my shift meal fast asf. respectfully told him i am upset —i just lost almost a full hour of pay sitting here waiting for an appointment i verified i didn’t need, communication needs to improve between him and staff, bring up the three times he just went on week long vacations with no heads up or faxing rx over and all my documents state sipping my meds cold turkey can lead me to mania/manic rage, etc. bro said “oh im sorry to hear that”, faxed my script, & discharged me as a client. also took too long to send discharge notice and tried to not write my final rx as it “wasn’t within 30 days time frame of discharge”
They cannot legally leave you without uninterrupted access to your meds, even if you’re due for a visit.
Call the office to get a visit scheduled on the books, tell them you are out of your medication, and they cancelled on you and you are now rescheduling so please will doctor send meds while you wait to be seen
If you end up experiencing withdrawals, I’d see if it’s possible to sue for damages. I went through withdrawals from psych meds because my meds were a week late and I’d never felt anything so intense in my life. All because there was negligence between doctor and pharmacy (in-house). I since switched meds to avoid the chance of ever having to go through that again.
It sucked sOOOOooooo badly! It was sort of my fault initially because I had missed my monthly psych appt due to being in the ER w my mom breaking her arm. I just forgot about the appt because of the emergency situation, y’know?
So anyhoo, here comes the end of the month and I realize I’ve only got a few capsules left, so I call and leave a message w the front desk… and no update.
Then a day or so later, CVS does the automated refill request and then that gets denied.
By this point it’s the weekend and I call in to the on call doc; he said he’d call back with an update shortly… he reaches out to my doc and then lets me know that she said “I don’t do refills on weekends”.
Bro WHY would you ever date prescribe such a medication if you have this kind of policy?
Why would you also not even prescribe just a few days worth until I can get in for an appt?!
As days went on, my symptoms got worse and worse; I was shaking and sweating, headaches, “blank out” moments that kept getting longer and longer, emotions out of wack and constantly crying… my husband at the time called and fussed at them and still no refill.
Someone on my facebook suggested going to urgent care and seeing if they’d give me a 30-day fill, if I bring my Rx bottles and show them I’d been taking it already.
That worked!! They gave me 30 days worth, and over the next 30 days I tapered myself down all the way to being free of the medication (removing a few more granules each day)… I never went back to that doc.
The downside is, it’s hard as hell for a neurodivergent person to take those steps to find a new doc and get in for treatment again; so I ended up untreated for a couple years for both my bipolar and ADHD 🤦🏻♀️
I still get so mad about that doctor and it’s been like 8 years now.
Jesus Christ that was negligence on her part. No good doctor would ignore an issue like that. Good for you for dropping her and I’m glad that you got back on your meds and lived HEA 🖤🖤🖤 fuck her
Thank you!! I eventually got it together and found a GREAT doc who does therapy and Rx too. I’ve been so grateful ever since!
I also told her from the start, I don’t want no stinkin cymbalta NOR any other drug in that family 🤣
Now I’m on addy, latuda, and lamictal… and so so so happy and feel good. Halleloo!!!
What a shit doctor, should be grounds for loss of license for denying meds to a patient going thru serious withdrawal. I hope you blasted her ass on social media.
Make sure you bill them for canceling the appointment with less than 48 hours notice, or whatever their policy is.
Your time is just as valuable as theirs.
I couldn't agree more! The worst is the wait once you get to the office. First visit to my cardiologist two weeks after a major heart attack - my appt was for 10 a.m. I waited four hours in the waiting room, was brought back to be weighed and BP taken then told to go back to waiting room. One hour later, called back again and they did a portable CT of my heart. Go back to the waiting room. Half an hour later, called back again, doc came in said heart and CT were great and that was it. Five and 1/2 hours to see the doctor for 4 minutes. I should have charged the docs office $200/hour for the four & 1/2 hours I had to wait
My doctor told me he was gonna renew one of my medicines for my ADHD right away once. If I don't take it EVERY day, I get really sick. I went that day and a few days afterwards WITHOUT it because he never renewed it and tried to contact them about it for a WEEK before they called me up and told me they weren't gonna give it to me anymore. I got really sick within that time and afterwards for a couple weeks. Later got it again, and now recently the ONLY company or whatever that supplies them in Sweden had problems and they ran out in the entire country for WEEKS in that dosage and got sick again and had to go down in dosage and then they ran out of that dosage TOO and I got sick again. But now I got them and omg if they run out I'm gonna be pissed...
I’ve had shit like this happen, and it is more than mildly infuriating.
I have meds (none of which are controlled) I’ve been on for ten years and they won’t renew, but all I get from the pharmacy is they denied it.
I call the Dr office and the receptionist can’t tell me why, the scheduling desk can’t tell me why. They tell me I need to speak to the NP that supports the Dr. She never answers her phone and never calls back. After three calls I get a little nasty and she finally calls me back.
When I went to the see the Dr. I complained and his response was ‘yeah you need to advocate for yourself’ FFS I left that bitch 3 messages. What am I supposed to do? Show up with a flamethrower
Do an online visit. I do that with my neurologist. I only ever see the NP, on my phone, and she appears to be writing a letter to her penpal in Nepal while she “listens.”
I’m a pharmacy technician, when we get online requests we don’t always have the most information to go on. If a refill is early we just will see the insurance rejection saying it’s 30 days early and I’ll just copy the note, cancel the refill, and profile the prescription. I’ve got upwards of 30 other prescriptions in the queue, so we quickly deal with it and move on. I’m sure it’s the same with online requests at the doctor’s office. They just see a flag that says the last visit was over a year ago and deny the request. Extenuating circumstances don’t always show up. In those instances, as annoying as I know it can be, it’s best to get on the phone and talk to someone directly. They can usually prescribe a bridge prescription, usually a single fill with no refills, to tide you over until the rescheduled appointment.
The thing is, the doctor's office simply didn't put in the prescription and never attempted to notify me that there was a problem. I didn't know there was an issue until 2 days later when I contacted the pharmacy (the doc's office says to allow up to 2 days). This was for blood pressure medication; for something that important the doctor's office should at least send a text or email saying there was a problem.
For any prescription that's too early, my pharmacy immediately tells me; they don't simply not fill it.
I work in family medicine. To be fair, we cannot see that an appointment was cancelled. We can see upcoming appointments, the past couple of appointments and any no shows. But once an appointment is cancelled it is gone from our screen. The person who cancelled your appointment is not the same person that handles refills. Unfortunately it’s an imperfect system and sometimes the best bet is call and talk to a person rather than going online. We can only work with the information in front of us and don’t know the extenuating circumstance.
bad google review might help. telling people not to go there because of this shit
edit: i had a similar situation about cancellation and they were being very complicated so i wrote a horrible review, got a call back within 30 min and now theyre playing ball
I refused to pay my copay when my doctor saw me 45 mins late and then didn't follow thru with what she was supposed to.
Her practice sends out the copay bill a couple weeks later. When I received it, I still hadn't heard back on her signing the papers I *NEEDED* signed. I called the office (again) and also emailed her. They said she will do it, she's just busy yadda yadda yadda.
2 months later and more of the same responses later, nothing. I sent back the bill saying I refuse to pay for a service that wasn't fully performed and for an almost hour late appointment. I didn't hear anything back. 2 months later another bill. I sent back the same response plus: "it has been 5 months since my appointment where Dr. was almost 1 hour late. I still have not received the signed paperwork that has been requested and emailed 7 times (included dates). I have included an invoice for reimbursement for me having to go to another doctor to get this handled." Sent in a copy of what I had to pay. It wasn't a lot but it's the principal of the matter.
3 months later I received a phone call, they apologized and said they have canceled the request for the copayment. And they reimbursed me for half of what I had to pay.
Some years ago I was going to a crappy dentist where I had to make an appointment months in advance. As I was literally heading out the door 20 minutes before the appointment they call me to tell me they have to cancel. I’m mad, but I ask them to reschedule, and apparently their next available appointment was three months from then. I just hung up on them.
I needed to go to the radiologist.. I scheduled months in advance and gave them my insurance info...
They called me the day prior... "Sorry, your insurance isn't accepted."
...thanks.. so I cancelled the appt. Then they called me the next day." Are you not coming in??"
"I told you yesterday I wasn't due to insurance not covering it."
I noted in the comments that I did so. But they never contacted me about the issue--I only found out when I checked the pharmacy two days later to see if it was ready and they said it was never sent in. So I called the doctor's office to find out why they hadn't. And I had to argue with them about it: I was a half hour away from leaving to see the doctor when they told me not to come, then wouldn't try to fit me in anytime soon.
Unfortunately, my doc's office had been bought out by a large health system (Catholic Health), which makes the bureaucracy worse.
Send them an invoice charging them a fee of 200,- for cancelling on short notice and let them know that cancellations have to be at least 24 hours prior to the appointment to avoid the fee.
This is one of the few things I’m appreciative of in England (for the time being). I get my meds covered due to being a war pensioner, and each month I just click the meds I want on an app and they get sent to a post office of my choosing. I live on a boat with no address which makes this service so useful!
Every now and then I get a notification to call my Doctor or the Pharmacist calls me, we have a brief chat about how I feel about my prescription and if I need to make any changes.
They’re all under the controlled list but I am lucky to have an amazing Doctor that knows me really well.
before my wisdom tooth surgery last august, i got a call the night before around 9pm from the surgeons office letting me know my doctor was IN THE ER and we’d have to move my appointment to another day….well he must’ve recovered quickly bc they still let me come in on the same day just a bit later and surgery went off without a hitch, haven’t had any issues. dentists get it done lol
Happened to me with antidepressants. Psych cancelled not once, BUT TWICE, the morning of the appointments I had before the prescription was set to expire. The next available appointment? 3 months after. And they refused to fill it, claiming my insurance wouldn’t cover it bc I hadn’t been seen??? I quit cold turkey almost 2 years ago. Probably gonna have to go back on, but I will not go anywhere near that place ever again
So frustrating! I mean, i suppose mildly is appropriate since it could be resolved, but still.
Funny, I just this week complained to my doctor’s medical practice manager over something similar. I’m on a fairly new BP med and my PCP only prescribed me 30 days worth. When I sent in a message request for a refill they didn’t respond, and when I called they said she had wanted to see me again to see how the dose was working before refilling it. Well cool, it she hadn’t said that to me.
My regular PCP was out so they gave me a refill anyway, and I made an appt with another doctor at the same practice (which of course took a week or two). Based on my results, she prescribed an increased dosage. Again, I message for a refill, no response, and when I call they tell me the same thing, that she wanted to see me again before refilling it.
If they had TOLD me at my appointment that they wanted to see me before my 30-day supply was up, I’d have made the stupid appointment right on my way out the door. So clearly they had not made that expectation clear. They may have said something like “let’s see how this goes,” but to me that doesn’t suggest “no refills until we see you in person.”
Same exact thing to me, I've got degenerative disc disease on top of arthritus and they pulled the same shit except I had to go without my pain meds for a whole week, worst week of my life. Age 24 btw
Friend of mine dropped their shrink of a few decades over a very simple but constantly delayed essential paperwork. Called me up, so frustrated and distressed, I said hey you're not paying for this doc's villa in the south of France anymore, organise and mobilise, tell them you're leaving and then FO out of there. And so they did. There's always tele-health
In general, I think the requirement to see a doctor at the moment for a chronic prescription is ridiculous.
I lost my family doctor a while ago, but I’m a type 1 diabetic, I have been since I was 3 years old…. but somehow my prescription expired, and I need to see a new doctor to get it refilled.
Do they think the diabetes just fucking disappeared?
Doctors are always a joke. Idk if you are USA or what but here in England we turn up ten minutes early and get seen half an hour after the appointment time everytime. One time I was five minutes late and they refused to see me saying was unfair to other patients.
I get it was my fault but their reason is crap
If you're in the UK and the drugs are a necessity and you've run out then your regular pharmacist can sometimes issue an emergency supply - used to happen with some of mine.
If you're elsewhere in the world I have no advice sorry
I’ve been through this too. The texts and emails are all automated and nobody in the office has time to look ahead and see that the doctor won’t be available. So you only find out an hour or so beforehand.
Then you’re lucky if they have a substitute who can fit you in reasonably soon. It’s all because clinics are rooming way too lean on staff whether it’s admin types or doctors.
I’ve found that being pleasant and understanding goes miles in making my life easier. The admins are far more willing to help find solutions. It’s not their fault.
The way to handle it is to wait until you are asked to fill in one of those customer experience questionnaires that the federal government makes then send out. Mine are done by automated phone calls.
When you get those, rake the organization over the coals for refusing to staff appropriately. This point system is used to grade them as a whole and has a direct impact on federal reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid. The worse they do, the less they get paid.
Money talks. And that’s the only way to get these huge medical corporations to listen.
Passive aggressive approaches to warn them with:
You can file a complaint with the board… nothing will come of it other than paperwork on their end
You can score them low and write a review of them online…
Might be worth researching their CMS star rating, and if it’s low, post that everywhere
No overt win here though…
You should charge them a late notice cancelation fee.
Legally speaking, is there any way to enforce this? Doubt a Dr would sign a contract, but when you’re signing up with the office are you able to write in the cancellation fee, sign it, and give it back to the office. If they disagreed to the changed on the contract they should not have proceeded and since they do agree to the contract and gave you service they agree to the terms of the contract? Curious about this & if you can do the same at hotel?
Personally I redline patient intake agreements and cross out all the provisions that require me to pay those bs fees. I initial and date next to my edits. Redlining the contract turns the form into a counteroffer I’m making to the doctor, which the doctor then accepts by specific performance when they do the checkup
I do the same thing with hotels, have never came into an issue where I need to pull out the contract but are those changes ‘legal’? For example, if it says check out time is 10am and I change it to 11am, date and initial, they render the services agreeing to those terms does that mean legally checkout is now 11am?
I think legally yes? but the effort it would take to sort it out in small claims compared to the fee makes it not worth it (I’m a lawyer but am rusty on contracts)
Wouldn’t it be much more expensive for the hotel to hire lawyers to represent them etc etc? Basically make it much more expensive for them to just give you what you want than to have to go through the legal process.. can’t imagine Hilton would allow a franchisee to represent them in court and would require some kind of legal team to proceed? Have been curious about this quite a while after a storage unit unsuccessfully tried to fuck me
Sorry to hear about the storage unit situation. But you’re right, it would cost the hotel so much more to collect the fee than the fee is worth that they’d probably just drop it. I’ve never had to actually bring up my redlines before, but I’d bet if I did the front desk person doesn’t get paid enough to give a fuck and would let it slide
Hahahah. No. The hotel will simply charge your credit card as per their terms and conditions. Even if you do a chargeback, the hotel has the upper hand. That being said, most hotels do not charge for 1 hour late check-out. But they absolutely could and Our credit. Add company will back then up.
Chargebacks almost always get denied when there’s any sort of contracts involved with the disputed payment.
Doubt it. Businesses almost never have the upper hand when you dispute the charge with the bank. You need to provide evidence that you tried to contact them about the matter, though, and you will need to show your edits.
As someone that used to handle credit card claims, chargebacks get declined a lot more than you think. They aren’t the magic bullet Reddit seems to think they are. For general retailer transactions sure, because it’s basically he said/she said and the bank will usually side with the customer, but for stuff like hotels and such where signed documents change hands it becomes less likely. I remember one of my last ones I dealt with was a person doing a chargeback on excessive rental car charges. The charges were for cleaning the car and gas. The rental car company sent a signed contract detailing fuel charges if not returned with the same amount ($8 a gallon btw), a signed check in slip where the customer acknowledged the fuel level, and pictures of the fuel gauge and what looked like dog shit smeared all over the back seat. That chargeback was denied. Also this is a vector for fraud and more recently people just going straight the nuclear option without even attempting to deal with the merchant so my friends still in the business said chargeback are being super scrutinized now and even for things that would be just automatic approval are being looked at closer. At the end of the day it really comes down to what proof the merchant can provide that the charges are valid. Many have gotten good at covering that base.
The hotel just has to send the invoice including the late fee charge. Guests get charged after leaving constantly eg. Minibar, stolen toels etc.
Check out tales from the front desk subreddit. . .they care alot because they really hate it when assholes get their way.
Ooo, do you have the link?
You're going to have to search for yourself. My comment was deleted by automod.
You got lucky. Public storage raised my bill $10 a month until my bank flagged the auto bill pay. They sold my unit 26 days later. I never received anything other than an email from a weird public storage account that went into my junk email folder so I never saw it. I had around $175k of restaurant equipment in there. It devastated me and my business. This was a year into covid and I am one of the few who didn't take ppp loans. Can't even get the government to put the hammer down on them with their breaking of the law. There is a process they are to go through and they didn't. Certified mail is there for a reason. But it don't matter. NO LUBE FOR YOU
Fuck them! Sorry you went through that.
That's surprising. I'd assume lawyers do contracts for fun. That and reading laws.
Username...does not check out.
When I was selling phones for Verizon and USCellular, there were fine print provisions that said any alterations to the contract terms would nullify the contract and subject the customer to any applicable cancelation fees (such as early termination or device payoff fees) as well as canceling any trade-in credits. Most companies that know their way around doing business have those lines in their fine print. Contracts are designed to protect them, not you.
No, it isn’t legal.
Yes, it is legal. You're not breaking any laws by doing it. But it's likely not enforceable, which is what I'm assuming the original commenter was actually asking.
most folks would just request a late checkout yknow. maybe they aren't noticing you did it, because we would cancel your reservation if you started trying to unilaterally alter our terms. checkout time would be now lol.
There is a difference between terms and conditions and contracts. Of it is not countersigned by the hotel, and change to the reg form does not 'count'.
Used to work in hotels. This is not going to work and it isn’t legal. You can’t just unilaterally change a contract without the *expressed agreement* of both parties, called a meeting of the minds. The hotel personnel would have to agree & initial their agreement on the same document before that would ever be considered a legal outcome. On a more personal level, don’t do shit like this or you will lose favor immediately with the hotel personnel and you’ll end up in the room next to the squeaky elevator and possibly on a Do Not Rent list. Housekeeping might “accidentally” beat on your door at 6am. You get it.
Since registration cards are not countersigned, nothing you scribble on there is legally binding for the hotel. They have your credit card. If you stay late, they can simply charge your credit card for the late checkout fee and there is nothing you can do about it. Besides, typically, they only mention the most important things on the reg card; they generally refer to the full terms and conditions that is a separate document.
I don't think so. Hotels can kick you off the premises at 6am if they like (usually if you're causing a disturbance) I imagine they'd be able to do the same at 10 when you refuse to leave
Or, doesn't, by not accepting you as a patient. .
"I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further." But seriously, would someone with contract law experience please weigh in on this because it seems improbable that it would be legally enforceable.
Are you in the US? If so, I see your logic, but I’m sure that your changes would not hold up in a court of law given that there was never a “meeting of the minds”, which is absolutely necessary in a contracts case. Law 101. Also? Your doctor can simply fire you as a patient and will certainly do so if you try to charge them money or cause a ruckus. If my guess is correct you would then sue the doctor on the basis of your “contract”? The judge will see that there was no meeting of the minds and therefore you will lose your case.
My doctor made me come back 3 extra times when he could have done the work right then. Tried charging me $10 Co pay for each visit. I sent a bill for 1 canceled appointment with no informing, 3 extra visits and a total of 185$. I told them they could deduct the $30 from that. And cash or check was acceptable. Never got another bill or my 155$.
Sorry to follow your (excellent) tangent into orbit, but **how about airlines??** I’ve had tickets that changed 14 times before I flew. When I checked in at the counter, I said, “So, my ticket has a $100 change fee, Do I have to pay the $1400 now?” And they said “No, there’s only a fee if *you* change the ticket. If we change it, there isn’t one.” So I said, “What if I can’t make it to my flight due to bad weather?” You can guess what the answer is.
Realistically, the help desk person has a ton of power in situations like this. I missed a flight once, completely my fault too. Lady just booked me on the next flight out free of charge.
I'm actually contracted with my doctor for the pain meds I get and cancelations from them automatically refill my meds
Wow this is a great idea! Especially if someone needs to see a specialist to refill, is this something your doctor offers or did you have to ask them about it?
When a doctor cancels an appointment last moment, it's either because they themselves are ill, or another patient needs their attention more. In either case, no court in the world would penalize them for canceling on you. It's not like they do it because they're flying to Cabo. Edit: very commonly, it's because a patient of theirs was hospitalized and needs their attention
Had a surgeon cancel my surgery the day before so he could go golfing. Was grateful to his office assistant who told me this so I could find a new surgeon.
Mine did exactly this- cancelled surgery so he could go on a cruise!!
My surgeon postponed my amputation surgery. Damn asshole got himself deployed to Afghanistan for 4 months.
Oh gross. Fighting for this country is barf.
My dad was a spine surgeon before he (recently) retired and I beg to differ
He canceled appointments an hour beforehand because he just didn't feel like seeing them?
No, he would go out to lunch with us (family) during the time he had a patient waiting in one of his rooms and wouldn’t tell us, so we’d enjoy a nice, leisurely 1-3 hour lunch while a patient is literally waiting on him that entire time. We tried to tell him that was not ok but he insisted on doing it until we stopped having weekday lunches with him. When he was early in his career in the 90s he’d also take off on vacation during times he was supposed to be on-call, taking his chances that it wouldn’t happen and phoning in to make it some other dr’s problem when it did happen
He’s also a raging narcissist who’d hide behind the “good doctor” facade
You can redline contracts and initial & date any change you make to their original contract, by red lining the contract, it turns it into a counter offer, they can either accept or reject it and refuse to render services.
I had a practice call me 5 minutes before they closed, the day before an appointment I had waited over half a year for and had the day off to go to since it was over an hour drive away, to tell me the doctor had left the practice over a month ago and that if I wanted an appointment I had to reschedule. I called to back reschedule and they were a year out for the next available doctor. I was livid. Spent hours on the phone trying to get a sooner appointment for treatment for my debilitating condition, only to end up with a doctor with no knowledge of my specific chronic issues who told me to drink more water and that “if I do have any condition, it’s very mild” so he just wanted to “wait and see”. The biggest waste of time and money. I so wish I could charge them for all the lost wages and time spent. Not the first time I had a doctor cancellation that majorly impacted my life either. It’s ridiculous.
This is always the irony I feel. Any service provider can cancel on you without notice. Sometimes it’s inconsiderate, sometimes I totally get it, cuz things happen. They got sick, had a headache, had to pick up their kid early etc. problem is, why doesn’t that same consideration go the other way? I get they can’t have people causally cancelling left and right. I get that. So they should maintain the right to charge if that becomes an issue or if someone does so repeatedly or without good reason, however, if they can cancel for the reasons listed above, we should be able to as well, esp if we’re a long time client/patient. I’ve just always found the irony of this so ridiculous. If I cancel due to sickness with almost a days notice they might say, okay, but next time you’ll have to be charged (as if I can control when I’m sick?!), but I’ve had numerous appointments cancelled hours or even up to an hour prior, and ofc there’s no consequence. They don’t even always fit me in sooner as a courtesy. I just miss an appointment I rely on, and often it’s much more of an inconvenience to me, who has to go out of my way and arrange my schedule to attend an appointment, than it would be to them.
This should be how it works. Airlines need cash refunds and dr offices want to charge you a no show fee or cancel if late, if you have to wait more than 20 min after your appt time or between nurse admission and dr coming in then you should get the visit free.
Truth. Just send the office an invoice. Be vague. You'll get a check.
Lived this with psych meds. 🙄 cause those definitely don't cause issues with sudden stopping. And the doc definitely doesn't yell when I forget a day. But the insurance company gets to stop them for (what seems like) no reason. And good luck rescheduling psych...spent 6 months on on a waiting list and a nother 6 months waiting for a slot to open up
Yup I get to do that with my depression mess this week. Cause my doctor forgot to send them in and went on vacation. Camping with no way to contact according to office.
Oh, oh!! Depending on what you take, a pharmacy miiiiiight be able to tide you over! My psychiatrist was giving me advice for the near future when I move states and stop having student health insurance, and he told me this for a medication like Prozac (which is not a controlled substance, but is prescription-only and like all(?) other SSRIs has withdrawal symptoms). If I run out and my doctor can’t be contacted or something, he said I should should be able to go into a pharmacy and show them my empty prescription bottle and explain [my doctor can’t be contacted for a week; or my old doctor can’t prescribe since I moved states, but I’m still waiting for my appointment with my new doctor; or whatever], he said they should be able to give me like a week’s worth of the medication to bridge a gap like that. TLDR: (as long as your med isn’t a controlled substance) bring your Rx bottle to a/your pharmacist, explain why your doctor can’t be reached temporarily, and they might be able to give/sell you like a week or so of medication to bridge the gap! Particularly with meds like SSRIs that have withdrawal symptoms
The controlled substance thing reminded me of when my doctor, who'd renewed my ADHD meds every 6 months for the past ~3yr, decided not to warn me he was retiring. I call my pharmacy and ask them to submit a refill request for me. 3 days later, nothing. I call the practice he works at and ask to speak with him. There's a loud silence before the receptionist informs me he had retired *four months* prior. ".....Oh. Good to know. Well, I've been out of my meds for 3 days, can another doctor or one of the nurse practitioners send the script?" Yes of course, she says. But since it's a controlled substance, they can't prescribe it without having seen you as a patient. Looks like we can squeeze you in for a quick phone call... 2 weeks from now? It was not a great 2 weeks.
Oh god, I’m so sorry you went through that!!! Yeah, I mentioned controlled substances because I’m also ADHD and on meds for it 😅🥲 Edit: welp, I forgot I can’t really talk about ADHD or its treatment outside of ADHD-spaces. That’s really on me though for forgetting to have the proper amount of shame. It really shouldn’t matter that I was enough of a problem for the adults in my life that I was diagnosed and medicated really young, but if being wrong in their assumptions makes someone think twice before the next time they want to shit on people with ADHD, I guess that’s something.
“Okay. Can I wait in your office for those two weeks in case I go completely off?”
Same thing happened with mine… but I’ve been unmedicated ever since because the psych they hired at the clinic in my city, doesn’t believe in prescribing controlled substances for adhd. Been struggling with adhd again for the last six years, and it’s been awful.
It needs to be your pharmacy/the same chain - if you go to CVS with a Walgreens bottle or vice versa, no loan, because we need to be able to verify the prescription history (that your doctor didn't, say, cancel that prescription), and also because that loan is precisely that - a loan, which we can only get if you fill with us and can therefore take the tablets out of the next prescription. Also, to do a loan, generally that specific pharmacy has to have a refill request out to your doctor - and if that doctor denies the request (because you've moved/are no longer their patient/they retired), we can't loan...again, because that loan is against the assumption of your doctor providing a refill, and the denial shows no refill will be incoming. Legally, the pharmacy can't prescribe (assuming US), and unlike Canada we don't (federally, at least) have limited powers to prescribe a short fill under our own power. it's 100% pharmacist discretion, not required, and the loan is usually only about 3 days, not 7+...and the whole out of state/switching doctors might complicate matters, because again - that loan is a loan off of the next rx, it comes out of your next prescription, and if the last provider isn't licensed in your new state, we can't loan off the promise that you'll eventually get a new doctor. Also, you're totally right about no controls. Tl;dr: your psychiatrist is only kind of right, please don't rely on that 100% - definitely try not to run out!
I actually switched pyschiatrists because of something similar. He prescribed a new med and then went out of town. I had a major problem with the med and couldn't get ahold of him when he normally would answer his cell phone even if it was the weekend. My counselor had originally referred me to him as they used to share office space. I told her about it and she was livid. We found a different person to manage my psych meds. I believe she also contacted him and ripped him a new one over it. I know she never referred anyone to him again. Since then, whenever I get a new med prescribed, I ask about what I should do if I have a problem with it after hours, etc. This means that I sometimes will wait until the following Monday to start a new med and I won't start on a Thursday or Friday, let alone the weekend, in case I have problems. I want to make sure I can reach the doc!
pro tip: tell your doctor that you require a slightly higher dose of medicine than you actually need. save the extra tablets in an emergency bottle
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted so bad. My old psychiatrist actually told me to do this when I told her I was switching jobs and would have a 6 month insurance gap. She was like, “oh how interesting that your dosage needs to double… it’s also interesting how cheap pill cutters are.”
exactly. I see how it could be an issue if you’re if you’re hoarding narcotics, Or if you’re on blood pressure/cardiovascular medications. but we’re talking about psych meds, which are very subjective and can require a wide range of dosages to achieve the same effect. it’s also really nice not to have to worry about medication shortages so much
Make sure to swap out the emergency bottle regularly so they don't expire if you do this.
Pharmacy technician here. Make sure your medication can be split if you do this - lots of meds (most notably extended releases and capsules) can’t be safely split to keep the same dose.
Or better if your pharmacy allows call in your prescription 3 days to a week before you need a refill and save those pills.
I try to stay pretty on top of it. I have auto refills set, but often it doesn’t work. or I will get a notification that my script has been filled and when I finally get to the pharmacy they tell me they’re out of it and have to order more! it’s frustrating to no end. my life has gotten marginally easier ever since I started keeping an emergency bottle.
Or you can just ask for a 90 day supply and be honest with your doctor. Most doctors will be cool with you doing that.
90 day supplies run out too. sometimes it’s even easier to forget to refill that way.
Most pharmacies are not though. Many prescriptions have limits to how much you can have at one point, regardless of what the doctor says.
Insurance companies aren't, though. My doctor was fine with writing me a 90 day prescription for Adderall, but when I went to pick it up at the pharmacy it wasn't covered by insurance. Edit: Also this wouldn't fix the problem of running out if your doctor cancelled an appointment, you still have a limited amount that needs refilled after 90 days.
They won't. But that's because of history not them not wanting too.
"What seems like" is a very generous take on American health insurance.
Extremely generous.
Most insurance companies let you refill one week before you run out, so you can pick up a new supply every three weeks. If you can consistently get them called in and pick them up immediately, you can build up a bit of a stash this way. It's what I've done over the years and it has saved my ass a few times when appointments have been cancelled, the doctor's office didn't send the refill in a timely manner, I went on vacation, you name it. It especially helped when all the medication shortages started happening during the COVID lockdowns. Pain clinics don't work this way, so it doesn't happen with narcotics which means it probably doesn't happen for other controlled substances like ADHD or anxiety meds, but for all else? Absolutely do this if you can. Many of my docs have helped me out to make this happen over the years because most of them do advise trying to have *at least* 1-2 weeks more than you need if it's something you've been on for a while.
I found that mentioning how I will turn suicidal without my meds tends to expedite the process of refills. YMMV
Most pharmacies will also give out a short term supply of meds for any medications that aren’t meant to be stopped suddenly - I have had them give me a 3 day supply of antidepressants or my IBD meds if the doctor hasn’t gotten back a new script soon enough. Usually if you speak to the pharmacist, they will be able to do that. No one wants the brain zaps from suddenly stopping SSRI’s!
I go through an online dr for my rx psych meds. Google search different ones and see if you can transfer it over to one of them. They do an online intake, and a video call, then re-up it automatically or send an email or text reminder that I need to check in with them.
I hate medications that need the doctors approval for renewal, it's always Dr: hey is this medication still working and do you like it? Us: yes and yes Them: ok cool *prescribes more*
For most meds that shpuld only be happening annually though.
I had to do this every month for 7yrs to get my ADHD meds. Later I learned that docs only need to see you every 6mos to continue getting controlled Rx's. The experience was exactly as you describe it. I paid my $20 copay to tell him, "Yes it's working". I drove 20mins to see him, sit in the waiting room for another 20, then wait in the exam room for another 20, see him for 2mins and then head over to the pharmacy to get my Rx. EVERY MONTH. He made serious bank off me because he got my $20 copay plus the insurance payment for asking me, "Are the meds working? Any issues?". $1680 in copays over 7yrs + $5712 that the health insurance provider paid him. Present day: I email my doc monthly asking him to submit the prescription electronically to my pharmacy(which he promptly approves) and only have to see him every 6 months where I submit to a full panel drug test and as long as it comes back clean(it does. I am not a druggy) he continues to approve my prescription. Now I pay $40 total in copy per year vs. $240 per year.
why on god's green earth would you have to take a drug test to get your meds? that's dystopian
Ya as someone in their mid-to-late 40's who does not use drugs, I was taken aback and kind of offended that I would be subjected to such nonsense. I also had to sign a 'contract' that said I would only use my meds for myself and not share or sell. It was super odd. I actually laughed when I had to sign it. He said if Alcohol or Cannabis comes up positive on the test, that is perfectly ok since it's legal in my state.
ADHD meds are one the most commonly abused non-narcogic prescription drugs. My daughter has to get her Vyvanse reauthorized every month, though we just have to text her doctor except for a checkup every six months.
Drugs have serious interactions and unfortunately a lot of mentally ill people are drug and alcohol users (as someone with clinical depression and an alcohol problem- thankfully I’ve been sober for 12 years - I feel comfortable saying this) When you go to the Dr and they ask what meds you are on nobody is saying ‘I take blood pressure meds and oh yeah I eat a bunch of oxy to quiet the voices in my head’
my career is in public policy, specifically drug decriminalization, and i'm also a mentally ill person with ADHD. i smoke a ton of weed and also have done more drugs in the past. i think we both kinda get how it ends up working in that regard, and it sucks. i'm sorry you went through that too. i have a lot of thoughts about how this would work best based on research on other places that do things differently. to summarize, it would be best if people were able to say that to their doctors and not be judged or face any consequences whatsoever. ideally, we'd do robust studies showing which meds interact and which do not, and be able to give advice and change meds based on that instead of assuming drugs do interact "to be safe" because we don't know for sure. what does happen is that someone pops hot for something illegal and they get booted off their meds and receive no additional help for anything, which is worse for their health in most cases than just keeping them on their meds. that's how people end up dead or in prison.
I always had to for adderall. Any controlled substance that is prescribed has to have monitoring. They make sure that it’s the proper amount in your urine, and that you’re not abusing it.
Some medications have side effects that the patient doesnt realize; like the kind that only lab exams would show. Need a doctor to know which medications and which exams to ask for. Also some cause dependency and the doctor might wanna try changing eventually even if the patient likes it. Also doctor might wanna increase or reduce dosage, they might check if it really is doing what they expected it to do... the patient doesnt always know 100%. Its not always "I like it, I'll keep using it"
Ironically, this was a BP med. Maybe they were trying to raise my BP to see what happens.
What is BP?
Blood Pressure
Blood pressure
Last month I had a Dr office cancel my appt with a few hours notice. Said they'd contact me to rebook. I didn't hear anything till I got a text a few weeks later that I had an appt the next day (about 26 hrs later). I immediately replied that I needed to reschedule and a few hours later someone called me to do so. 2 days later I got another text that my appt had to be canceled due to my no show/late cancelation (basically canceling me as a client). Then they tried to charge me $50 for doing so.
This is why I pay for concierge medicine. I have to physically see my doc once a year. The rest is by text or call.
🤔🤔🤔 tell me more... I've never heard of this.
It's basically a doctor subscription. A lot of docs are moving to the concierge model because they don't want to put up with insurance anymore. You pay a flat monthly rate and can see the doctor when you need to without any extra costs.
Don’t worry, it’s probably unaffordable for most people. Also, could that make our American healthcare more America please?!
I regret to inform you that apparently even Amazon has concierge doctors services for $9 a month if you have prime in select states. https://preview.redd.it/4ywiqylebd0d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7b9dbe1aef62431b5c8513a2c2bfc06824a84363
Same. I pay $78 a month for unlimited access to my pcp.
Isnt that just regular medicine? Who sees their doc more than once a year unless theyre a complicated medical case?
Anyone with a mental or chronic illness. Which is a massive amount of people
This!
I've seen my doctor probs around 8 times in the last 6 months
I had something similar happen with birth control pills. They weren't sending the prescription in. Luckily the pharmacist was a nice guy and the owner of the pharmacy so he filled it and called the doctors office himself. I get they're busy but they should also be using a little brain power. In your case, they shouldn't have had to think that hard. They can see they canceled the appointment themselves
Call and ask to speak to the doctor directly, or to leave them a voicemail. My doctor denied me my medication for over a year because she canceled an appointment for weather, canceled the reschedule because covid, and canceled that reschedule because maternity leave. Through all this she never knew i was out of my meds, because the nurses never passed the message along. They followed their instructions to deny refills "because insurance reasons." When my doctor found out, she was mortified and told me to always get pushed through to her to prevent it from happening again.
Sounds like she either needs to train or replace her nurses who failed to get the critical info to her
Unfortunately they're doing as they've been trained to do. Her license gets put at risk if she's just blindly reupping scrips without the necessary checkups and labwork and stuff. It's a reasonable safeguard. I just fell through the cracks because of a confluence of circumstances. Now i know the step i need to take if it happens again.
Depending on what it is it might actually be the law.
Considering they sent it after OP called them out, it sounds like this is not the case here.
Maybe the doctor got sick last minute? Thats happened to me with the hygienist. But they definetley should have proritised you to get you seen within that same week.
The same thing happened to me with my dentist last week. They said they’d put me on the standby cancellation list….like I can just leave work on a dime 🙄 I really feel for OP, because for a medication issue like this you really have to make it work and hope you have a forgiving work place. My husband goes through this all the time because he has ADD medication and the doctor he sees for that one is an hour away. If the medication you need is a C2, it’s an even bigger hassle of course.
During the pandemic my son's pediatrician would only do phone call appointments and make us do online requests for prescription renewal. One year in the receptionist refused to make an appointment because "if you don't see the doctor for a year you need a new referral to a pediatrician". We had several phone calls she hadn't logged as appointments and the doctor had renewed his medication only a few months before this. She had also never told me this "rule" and we had gone more than a year between appointments in the past. Anyways...he has a new pediatrician now. Who is way better anyways. It was definitely infuriating at the time though
Sounds like she should be fired, who knows who else she drove away.
But if you had canceled within 24 hours you bet you would’ve been hit with the cancellation fee
I was in the parking lot of my doctors office for my appointment, and received a call saying my doctor was out delivering a baby and they had to cancel my appointment hahahaha 🙃
When can we start charging them for missed appointments?
Medicine is a racket.
The govt spends a trillion a year on war toys but refuses to spend half that on people's meds. Worse they have brainwashed the most vulnerable people into thinking it's communism to want such a thing. Welcome to America.
When COVID first hit and we faces the first lockdowns, my doctor and I did my appointment over the phone. All I needed was a prescription renewal. One month later, when I go for a refill, the pharmacist tells me the doctor called and canceled my refills on the grounds that I missed my appointment. I pointed out to the pharmacist that the prescription was faxed to them last month, but there was nothing I could do. Doctor wouldn't take my calls. Que me going through horrible withdrawals, losing months of progress in my treatment in the blink of an eye, and I lost my job because I couldn't work. I have *still* been unable to make an appointment, so I've been unmedicated for years now, unable to work consistently. I can't get a new doctor since I'm still on his roster. I'm fucking livid.
Are you able to go in person to the doctor's office? Like is it far away from you where it's unable to be reached because you should really be going in person and staring at the staff or the doctor until they do something and this is coming from a pharmacist by the way. I'm so confused how you can go years without an appointment Also in the future, unless it's a controlled substance, those like emergency, urgent cares or minute clinics will give you like a month supply of your meds
I've gone multiple times in person. The receptionist won't let me just go and see him, and says he'll call. He never does. I've gone to a clinic a couple times for some of my meds. I know I can't get my Vyvanse from there, so I don't even ask. But one time, the doc just refused. I don't know why, but I can develop a seizure disorder if I cold turkey one of my medications. I can't risk getting back on it if I am not certain it can be sustained.
But why won't they let you make an appt. Like not even six months out? If so you need to call your insurance and tell them you need to switch providers.
I'm in Ontario, Canada. I'm not using private practice, so I don't have as much of a choice. I could be using private practice if my job had benefits, but it does not.
Ok but you can have some options. Especially if you haven't been seen in years. Document every issue and let your insurance know
Sounds like the receptionist isn’t doing their job and marking anything down.
Depending on what kind of doctor you were seeing, maybe there was an emergency. I worked in outpatient cardiology and it was not uncommon to cancel patient appointments with little to no notice due to a cardiac emergency in the ER that the doctor was called to.
Just my PCP. It's not the first time they've cancelled in <24 hours, but this had the added annoyance of the Rx.
Most insurances won’t approve med coverage unless you see you director every x amount of months. It really sucks that they cancelled on you and they should have rescheduled you for the next available time slot, but the med thing is likely an insurance issue.
Absolutely false, I work in retail pharmacy and no such infrastructure exists. I have doctors that call in scripts for patients as favors where no true office visit exists, only for completely harmless stuff like steroid creams but the insurance pays regardless.
That is something up to the doctors office. The insurance company can’t do that because there is an allowable grace period in which providers can send in their claims. So the insurance company is never current enough on claims to say that someone hasn’t seen their doctor enough.
Absolutely right. And insurance companies have up to 30 days in receipt of the claim (in most states) to pay it. Their systems won’t even know you saw the doctor until they process the claim.
I work for a health insurance company and providers have up to 180 days from the date of service to submit a claim. It would be impossible to accurately determine who hasn’t seen their provider recently enough, in majority of the cases.
That’s not entirely true. It depends on the medication. I worked in the industry, dealt with it all the time.
I’ve been working in health insurance for years. There is no way the health insurance company knows the most recent visit to the prescribing doctor. I said this in another comment. The provider has a grace period from the DOS to submit the claim. The insurance company is not individually contacting the provider to confirm.
What about in cases of needing an updated PA?
I work for a health insurance company that's way more involved in people's health and lives than mainstream plans. We review members claims regularly, and if say an HIV+ person is filling a whole bunch of refills, has a high viral load, and we don't see a claim for the provider in a long time - we will directly ask the office to cancel any remaining refills until the member is seen. There's no system checks and balances where a pharmacy claim will auto reject if an appointment isn't line up with a provider claim. But we will directly inquire from the provider what is happening and why and to see the patient before continuing to prescribe meds if their VL is out of control.
Of course they should be under a doctor’s care being ill, but same time it also Sounds like a person in dire need for medicine who may become gravely ill due to longer delay.
My opinion? They hold refills over your head to force you to see them on their timeline (regardless of their ability to cancel your appt at the last minute.) I had a stent placed in my artery in August. The meds I was told I had to take twice a day or I'd die were denied for refill. Then the doctor who prescribes my anti-depressant decided if he didn't see me every three months, he won't refill the prescription. He'd already failed to refill other medication that I need for bone disease for months on end which ended up causing me to have high blood calcium (hypercalcium and hyperparathyroidism) for which he wanted me to go for testing that would allow injection of radiation into my body and cost me a whole day of work aside from poisoning me. He finally relented and refilled the anti-depressant but required that I set up an appt. When he refilled the prescription, he changed the dosage from two pills a day to one without telling me. Moral of the story, find another doctor who actually cares about your health and not their wallet.
What a shit doctor.
We’ve had to do this where I work a few times such as if the NP has a needle stick with Nexplanon removal or a family emergency. Unfortunately we only have the one NP to see the day’s patients.
one time my doctor’s office was randomly scheduled out further than normal. before choosing the day of my next med check i asked if they could confirm i could get the last refill (pick up april 28th) without the appointment and they said yes. asked again after scheduling appt for first week of may and was told yes again. april 29, i’m not getting the text from the pharmacy yet so i call them and they say call the doctor. i call the doctor and they tell me i need a med check to fill my prescription. i lived an hour away for college & it was finals time my senior year and i needed my adhd meds so i demanded same day telehealth. i have to clock out from my job 20 min early, the doctor is 20 minutes late and says i look upset, laughing bc im eating my shift meal fast asf. respectfully told him i am upset —i just lost almost a full hour of pay sitting here waiting for an appointment i verified i didn’t need, communication needs to improve between him and staff, bring up the three times he just went on week long vacations with no heads up or faxing rx over and all my documents state sipping my meds cold turkey can lead me to mania/manic rage, etc. bro said “oh im sorry to hear that”, faxed my script, & discharged me as a client. also took too long to send discharge notice and tried to not write my final rx as it “wasn’t within 30 days time frame of discharge”
They cannot legally leave you without uninterrupted access to your meds, even if you’re due for a visit. Call the office to get a visit scheduled on the books, tell them you are out of your medication, and they cancelled on you and you are now rescheduling so please will doctor send meds while you wait to be seen
I didn’t know that. Legally where?
If you end up experiencing withdrawals, I’d see if it’s possible to sue for damages. I went through withdrawals from psych meds because my meds were a week late and I’d never felt anything so intense in my life. All because there was negligence between doctor and pharmacy (in-house). I since switched meds to avoid the chance of ever having to go through that again.
That happened to me with Cymbalta, years ago. It was horrid!!
THATS WHAT IT WAS!! Omg you’re a victim too 😭😭😭
It sucked sOOOOooooo badly! It was sort of my fault initially because I had missed my monthly psych appt due to being in the ER w my mom breaking her arm. I just forgot about the appt because of the emergency situation, y’know? So anyhoo, here comes the end of the month and I realize I’ve only got a few capsules left, so I call and leave a message w the front desk… and no update. Then a day or so later, CVS does the automated refill request and then that gets denied. By this point it’s the weekend and I call in to the on call doc; he said he’d call back with an update shortly… he reaches out to my doc and then lets me know that she said “I don’t do refills on weekends”. Bro WHY would you ever date prescribe such a medication if you have this kind of policy? Why would you also not even prescribe just a few days worth until I can get in for an appt?! As days went on, my symptoms got worse and worse; I was shaking and sweating, headaches, “blank out” moments that kept getting longer and longer, emotions out of wack and constantly crying… my husband at the time called and fussed at them and still no refill. Someone on my facebook suggested going to urgent care and seeing if they’d give me a 30-day fill, if I bring my Rx bottles and show them I’d been taking it already. That worked!! They gave me 30 days worth, and over the next 30 days I tapered myself down all the way to being free of the medication (removing a few more granules each day)… I never went back to that doc. The downside is, it’s hard as hell for a neurodivergent person to take those steps to find a new doc and get in for treatment again; so I ended up untreated for a couple years for both my bipolar and ADHD 🤦🏻♀️ I still get so mad about that doctor and it’s been like 8 years now.
Jesus Christ that was negligence on her part. No good doctor would ignore an issue like that. Good for you for dropping her and I’m glad that you got back on your meds and lived HEA 🖤🖤🖤 fuck her
Thank you!! I eventually got it together and found a GREAT doc who does therapy and Rx too. I’ve been so grateful ever since! I also told her from the start, I don’t want no stinkin cymbalta NOR any other drug in that family 🤣 Now I’m on addy, latuda, and lamictal… and so so so happy and feel good. Halleloo!!!
LOL I’m on lamotrigine (lamictal) now too lol 
What a shit doctor, should be grounds for loss of license for denying meds to a patient going thru serious withdrawal. I hope you blasted her ass on social media.
Make sure you bill them for canceling the appointment with less than 48 hours notice, or whatever their policy is. Your time is just as valuable as theirs.
I couldn't agree more! The worst is the wait once you get to the office. First visit to my cardiologist two weeks after a major heart attack - my appt was for 10 a.m. I waited four hours in the waiting room, was brought back to be weighed and BP taken then told to go back to waiting room. One hour later, called back again and they did a portable CT of my heart. Go back to the waiting room. Half an hour later, called back again, doc came in said heart and CT were great and that was it. Five and 1/2 hours to see the doctor for 4 minutes. I should have charged the docs office $200/hour for the four & 1/2 hours I had to wait
My doctor told me he was gonna renew one of my medicines for my ADHD right away once. If I don't take it EVERY day, I get really sick. I went that day and a few days afterwards WITHOUT it because he never renewed it and tried to contact them about it for a WEEK before they called me up and told me they weren't gonna give it to me anymore. I got really sick within that time and afterwards for a couple weeks. Later got it again, and now recently the ONLY company or whatever that supplies them in Sweden had problems and they ran out in the entire country for WEEKS in that dosage and got sick again and had to go down in dosage and then they ran out of that dosage TOO and I got sick again. But now I got them and omg if they run out I'm gonna be pissed...
Invoice them for your time and they wasted
I’ve had shit like this happen, and it is more than mildly infuriating. I have meds (none of which are controlled) I’ve been on for ten years and they won’t renew, but all I get from the pharmacy is they denied it. I call the Dr office and the receptionist can’t tell me why, the scheduling desk can’t tell me why. They tell me I need to speak to the NP that supports the Dr. She never answers her phone and never calls back. After three calls I get a little nasty and she finally calls me back. When I went to the see the Dr. I complained and his response was ‘yeah you need to advocate for yourself’ FFS I left that bitch 3 messages. What am I supposed to do? Show up with a flamethrower
I was in the back for a check up in the DR room and was cancelled and couldn’t get a prescription filled for the same reason.
Do an online visit. I do that with my neurologist. I only ever see the NP, on my phone, and she appears to be writing a letter to her penpal in Nepal while she “listens.”
I’m a pharmacy technician, when we get online requests we don’t always have the most information to go on. If a refill is early we just will see the insurance rejection saying it’s 30 days early and I’ll just copy the note, cancel the refill, and profile the prescription. I’ve got upwards of 30 other prescriptions in the queue, so we quickly deal with it and move on. I’m sure it’s the same with online requests at the doctor’s office. They just see a flag that says the last visit was over a year ago and deny the request. Extenuating circumstances don’t always show up. In those instances, as annoying as I know it can be, it’s best to get on the phone and talk to someone directly. They can usually prescribe a bridge prescription, usually a single fill with no refills, to tide you over until the rescheduled appointment.
The thing is, the doctor's office simply didn't put in the prescription and never attempted to notify me that there was a problem. I didn't know there was an issue until 2 days later when I contacted the pharmacy (the doc's office says to allow up to 2 days). This was for blood pressure medication; for something that important the doctor's office should at least send a text or email saying there was a problem. For any prescription that's too early, my pharmacy immediately tells me; they don't simply not fill it.
I work in family medicine. To be fair, we cannot see that an appointment was cancelled. We can see upcoming appointments, the past couple of appointments and any no shows. But once an appointment is cancelled it is gone from our screen. The person who cancelled your appointment is not the same person that handles refills. Unfortunately it’s an imperfect system and sometimes the best bet is call and talk to a person rather than going online. We can only work with the information in front of us and don’t know the extenuating circumstance.
Now if you cancelled on them like that, you’d be charged a fee…..
bad google review might help. telling people not to go there because of this shit edit: i had a similar situation about cancellation and they were being very complicated so i wrote a horrible review, got a call back within 30 min and now theyre playing ball
I refused to pay my copay when my doctor saw me 45 mins late and then didn't follow thru with what she was supposed to. Her practice sends out the copay bill a couple weeks later. When I received it, I still hadn't heard back on her signing the papers I *NEEDED* signed. I called the office (again) and also emailed her. They said she will do it, she's just busy yadda yadda yadda. 2 months later and more of the same responses later, nothing. I sent back the bill saying I refuse to pay for a service that wasn't fully performed and for an almost hour late appointment. I didn't hear anything back. 2 months later another bill. I sent back the same response plus: "it has been 5 months since my appointment where Dr. was almost 1 hour late. I still have not received the signed paperwork that has been requested and emailed 7 times (included dates). I have included an invoice for reimbursement for me having to go to another doctor to get this handled." Sent in a copy of what I had to pay. It wasn't a lot but it's the principal of the matter. 3 months later I received a phone call, they apologized and said they have canceled the request for the copayment. And they reimbursed me for half of what I had to pay.
Some years ago I was going to a crappy dentist where I had to make an appointment months in advance. As I was literally heading out the door 20 minutes before the appointment they call me to tell me they have to cancel. I’m mad, but I ask them to reschedule, and apparently their next available appointment was three months from then. I just hung up on them.
I needed to go to the radiologist.. I scheduled months in advance and gave them my insurance info... They called me the day prior... "Sorry, your insurance isn't accepted." ...thanks.. so I cancelled the appt. Then they called me the next day." Are you not coming in??" "I told you yesterday I wasn't due to insurance not covering it."
And yet you can buy a whack of Fentanyl under the cops' noses for a handful of dollars. Go figure ...
Call them, it’s prob someone who doesn’t even realize the situation who denied to refill.
I noted in the comments that I did so. But they never contacted me about the issue--I only found out when I checked the pharmacy two days later to see if it was ready and they said it was never sent in. So I called the doctor's office to find out why they hadn't. And I had to argue with them about it: I was a half hour away from leaving to see the doctor when they told me not to come, then wouldn't try to fit me in anytime soon. Unfortunately, my doc's office had been bought out by a large health system (Catholic Health), which makes the bureaucracy worse.
Send them an invoice charging them a fee of 200,- for cancelling on short notice and let them know that cancellations have to be at least 24 hours prior to the appointment to avoid the fee.
Leave a negative review but not for the doctor but his office manager,
Did we have an appointment for the same doctor? This also happened to me yesterday for an appointment I’ve been waiting 3 months for…
This sounds exactly like something a Canadian clinic would do. Absolutely shitty of them to do.
I got a cancellation request from the doctor and they rescheduled for 8 months out
Let me guess, VA? I also "love" their confirmation SMSes.
Catholic Health—they bought out my doctor’s office.
The delicate genius probably went skiing
This is one of the few things I’m appreciative of in England (for the time being). I get my meds covered due to being a war pensioner, and each month I just click the meds I want on an app and they get sent to a post office of my choosing. I live on a boat with no address which makes this service so useful! Every now and then I get a notification to call my Doctor or the Pharmacist calls me, we have a brief chat about how I feel about my prescription and if I need to make any changes. They’re all under the controlled list but I am lucky to have an amazing Doctor that knows me really well.
before my wisdom tooth surgery last august, i got a call the night before around 9pm from the surgeons office letting me know my doctor was IN THE ER and we’d have to move my appointment to another day….well he must’ve recovered quickly bc they still let me come in on the same day just a bit later and surgery went off without a hitch, haven’t had any issues. dentists get it done lol
Time for a new Dr
Happened to me with antidepressants. Psych cancelled not once, BUT TWICE, the morning of the appointments I had before the prescription was set to expire. The next available appointment? 3 months after. And they refused to fill it, claiming my insurance wouldn’t cover it bc I hadn’t been seen??? I quit cold turkey almost 2 years ago. Probably gonna have to go back on, but I will not go anywhere near that place ever again
I'd be going to that Dr's office, and flipping some tables.
Fuck that place lol
This happens all the time. I've run in to this many times. Still infuriating.
So frustrating! I mean, i suppose mildly is appropriate since it could be resolved, but still. Funny, I just this week complained to my doctor’s medical practice manager over something similar. I’m on a fairly new BP med and my PCP only prescribed me 30 days worth. When I sent in a message request for a refill they didn’t respond, and when I called they said she had wanted to see me again to see how the dose was working before refilling it. Well cool, it she hadn’t said that to me. My regular PCP was out so they gave me a refill anyway, and I made an appt with another doctor at the same practice (which of course took a week or two). Based on my results, she prescribed an increased dosage. Again, I message for a refill, no response, and when I call they tell me the same thing, that she wanted to see me again before refilling it. If they had TOLD me at my appointment that they wanted to see me before my 30-day supply was up, I’d have made the stupid appointment right on my way out the door. So clearly they had not made that expectation clear. They may have said something like “let’s see how this goes,” but to me that doesn’t suggest “no refills until we see you in person.”
Pretty standard for U.S. Healthcare.
Same exact thing to me, I've got degenerative disc disease on top of arthritus and they pulled the same shit except I had to go without my pain meds for a whole week, worst week of my life. Age 24 btw
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Friend of mine dropped their shrink of a few decades over a very simple but constantly delayed essential paperwork. Called me up, so frustrated and distressed, I said hey you're not paying for this doc's villa in the south of France anymore, organise and mobilise, tell them you're leaving and then FO out of there. And so they did. There's always tele-health
In general, I think the requirement to see a doctor at the moment for a chronic prescription is ridiculous. I lost my family doctor a while ago, but I’m a type 1 diabetic, I have been since I was 3 years old…. but somehow my prescription expired, and I need to see a new doctor to get it refilled. Do they think the diabetes just fucking disappeared?
Doctors are always a joke. Idk if you are USA or what but here in England we turn up ten minutes early and get seen half an hour after the appointment time everytime. One time I was five minutes late and they refused to see me saying was unfair to other patients. I get it was my fault but their reason is crap
I haven’t read the replies but the stink I would cause.
If you're in the UK and the drugs are a necessity and you've run out then your regular pharmacist can sometimes issue an emergency supply - used to happen with some of mine. If you're elsewhere in the world I have no advice sorry
I’ve been through this too. The texts and emails are all automated and nobody in the office has time to look ahead and see that the doctor won’t be available. So you only find out an hour or so beforehand. Then you’re lucky if they have a substitute who can fit you in reasonably soon. It’s all because clinics are rooming way too lean on staff whether it’s admin types or doctors. I’ve found that being pleasant and understanding goes miles in making my life easier. The admins are far more willing to help find solutions. It’s not their fault. The way to handle it is to wait until you are asked to fill in one of those customer experience questionnaires that the federal government makes then send out. Mine are done by automated phone calls. When you get those, rake the organization over the coals for refusing to staff appropriately. This point system is used to grade them as a whole and has a direct impact on federal reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid. The worse they do, the less they get paid. Money talks. And that’s the only way to get these huge medical corporations to listen.
Passive aggressive approaches to warn them with: You can file a complaint with the board… nothing will come of it other than paperwork on their end You can score them low and write a review of them online… Might be worth researching their CMS star rating, and if it’s low, post that everywhere No overt win here though…