Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Reason Why Dental Centers Have Long Waits

Having that long dreaded wait in the dental office waiting room can be annoying. When you have a 1pm appointment and you sit there for 45 minutes just waiting to be called back into the room, the frustration kicks in. Which leads to a lot of questions like:

1. If my appointment was at 1 and I am not being seen until 1:45, then why not schedule me at 1:45?
2. Why does the dentist over book their schedule?
3. I am on time, why can't they be on time.

So let me try to answer these question from the perspective of the dental center,

1. When you set your appointment, the office did not plan on being behind schedule. They planned on seeing you at 1pm. Since they are behind schedule, if your appointment was a 1:45 then you still would have to wait.

2. The dental center did not over book the schedule. Everything is scheduled according to the procedure that is needed. If a procedure takes an hour and half, the next appointment is scheduled for an hour and half after that appointment. However, sometimes some unforseen things come up and it causes that procedure to take longer.

3. They want to be on time. However, there a various factors that cause them to fall behind on the schedule. Believe it or not, most of the time it is not the fault of the dentist office.

Here are some things that cause a dental center to fall behind.

1. Patients being late to an appointment. This is one of the biggest causes of the delays. Especially if you are on of the first few patients of the day. If those first few patients are late, it could throw the whole office behind schedule all day long.

2. Unforseen things with another patient. If someone is scheduled for a filling and it turns out they now need a root canal, then the dentist is no longer tied up for the 20 minutes he is scheduled for, he is now tied up for an hour or so. This causes him to fall behind.

These are just some of things and I know that there are more.

Just try to be patient, they are working as fast as they can.

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