You know what frosts my flakes?
Doctors and dentists wasting my time.
By the time I show up for an appointment, I’ve already received three reminders — two emails and a phone call. So clearly, they know I’m coming.
Yet, the second I walk through the door, they hand me a clipboard like I’m a complete stranger who just wandered in off the street looking for free cough drops.
Then comes the paperwork. The forms look like they were created on a typewriter during the Reagan administration and photocopied so many times they now resemble cave drawings.
Half the instructions are blurry. The other half are cut off. And somehow, despite modern technology, I still have to fill out the exact same information every single visit.
My name hasn’t changed, nor has my gender or birth date.
My address hasn’t changed either.
My phone number definitely hasn’t changed because you literally called it yesterday to remind me not to be late.
Then they ask for my pharmacy information again. I’ve used the same pharmacy for 15 years. You people send prescriptions there so often the pharmacist probably sends your office Christmas cards.
Then comes my medical history. Apparently, they still need to know about the surgery I had in 1972. Trust me, if they invent a procedure that reverses a tonsillectomy from the Nixon era, I’ll let everybody know.
And every time I have to review a giant checklist of illnesses. Do you have asthma? Diabetes? High blood pressure? Endometriosis?
Listen carefully. I am an old man. If I suddenly develop endometriosis, we’ve got much bigger medical issues to discuss.
Then they ask for my emergency contact. My oldest daughter is still listed. If I collapse in the waiting room after spending 45 minutes filling out paperwork, just unlock my phone. Her number is probably the one I was texting while waiting past my appointment time.
And don’t forget the sacred privacy notice. I have to sign a form promising I received it even though I can hear every conversation through walls thinner than gas station toilet paper.
I know more about the guy in Room 3’s colonoscopy than I ever wanted to know.
The whole thing reads like nonsense written by lawyers ending with, “Sign here acknowledging your privacy rights.”
What rights? I can hear a nurse discussing somebody’s fungus problem from 30 feet away.
Here’s a revolutionary idea. Since you already have my information stored in your computer, why not print it out before I arrive?
Then hand me ONE page that says: “Please review and let us know if anything changed.”
That’s it. No clipboard. No archaeological paperwork. No rewriting my life story every six months.
Otherwise, some poor employee has to compare my handwritten chicken scratch to information already sitting in the computer system.
That’s not efficiency. That’s administrative Groundhog Day.
I’m Grandpa Grumpy, and I swear every medical appointment ages me faster than the actual illness.
