Our Scheduling Policy
At Friendswood Women, we pride ourselves on taking care of our patients in a timely manner. Your time is valuable! We try to take every precaution to have our daily appointment schedule run as close to “on time” as possible. We have all waited in a doctor’s office for hours before even being brought back to a room. At Friendswood Women, we have policies set up to try to avoid having that happen to our patients.
Our policies are both for our staff and for our patients. The staff policies apply to both the providers and other staff. In order to avoid the long wait times, our providers make every effort to arrive on time to begin their day. If our provider is at the hospital dealing with an unforeseen emergency, we make every effort to notify patients ahead of time, if possible. Our schedulers avoid double booking appointments (unless there’s an emergency), so that our providers avoid feeling rushed in the rooms with patients. Our medical assistants prepare in advance for the day’s schedule of patients to try to have everything ready prior to the patient coming in for her appointment.
Our patient policies are related to timely arrival for appointments. We ask that new patients arrive to their appointment at least 30 minutes prior to their scheduled appointment to allow time for paperwork and medical chart creation with an accurate medical history. Also, for established patients, we ask that you arrive on time for your appointments. If you arrive more than 10 minutes late, there is a possibility of having to reschedule your appointment. In addition, we require 24 hours’ notice prior to an appointment cancellation. This allows us to be able to give that appointment slot to another patient who has been waiting for one to become free. Failing to provide 24 hours’ notice could result in a $50 missed appointment fee.
It is only through this partnership between our staff and patients that we are able to limit wait times in the office and allow those who need to be placed on the schedule for an acute problem to be seen timely. We appreciate everyone’s participation in this endeavor, which helps us provide high quality, efficient medical care to all of our patients.
