Charge for Pediatrician Meet & Greet

[bizzylizzy]

Is this normal? I thought meet and greet's were free. This is turning me off to our potential practitioner. Thoughts?

[4myfinn]

It should be free. I'd be turned off too.

[One_Girl]

If you make an appointment with a doctor and go in to see them during office hours then you have to pay for it in the area I live in. Doctors don't tend to have meet and greet sessions here but that may be a regional thing. You could call around to ask different clinics if they do meet and greets and what the charge is for them in your area so you can see if this is common practice.

[dogretro]

I had one prenatal meeting/interview w/ our ped & it was free.

[cschick]

I think it's pretty area-specific.

All the peds in our area wanted a $50 fee for doing an interview (this was in 2006). If you decided to go with them the $50 was applied to your account.

[tbone_kneegrabber]

I think it is also an issue of valuing their time. They are taking time when they could be seeing a patient (and I always have trouble gettting an appointment at our office) to see someone and "chat." Is that time worth anything? Some would say yes others no, but its not like hiring a plumber there isn't usually a "free estimate." Dr are typically not used to "selling" themselves, at least around here, so if you want to talk, you pay, like everyone else who wants to talk (albeit about how they are feeling).

[gcgirl]

I've never met a doctor who would do that for free. My OB gave me half off his usual rate at least.

[texmati]

Originally Posted by gcgirl

I've never met a doctor who would do that for free. My OB gave me half off his usual rate at least.

wow. all the ob's and ped's do free interviews, or meet and greet nights at least! If they are to busy to see me for free, or that uninterested in meeting me, than they are to busy to be my doctor.

[tanyalynn]

ours scheduled them only at the very end of her day on certain days of the week, so there was some waiting involved, but it was free.

[pjs]

There was a mw in my area doing this though it is not common practice around here. I get that her time is worth something, but so is mine. If she wants my business she shouldn't charge me to meet her, I am the client afterall.

[lilyka]

i can't remember if I did a meet and greet with my midwife. I think I just scheduled an appointment. I went with her though so it was included in the prenatal package. I would never expect and meetings with a Dr. to be free unless it was advertised as such. I know we met with the ped. but he had a deal with my midwife....we didn;'t end up staying with him once the initial hospital + follow up visit was over (We had a regular ped but just needed someone with privledges at hospital A while we were there. our ped only had privledges at Hospital B and midwife only had privledges at hospital A.)

[Tigerchild]

If it's vital for you that your practitioner do free meet and greets, then you need to cross this person off your list.

Me, I don't really care about stuff like that. Granted, I don't care all that much about the doctor being crunchy or things like that either--I just want an excellent, competant, experienced doctor who doesn't B.S. or blow sunshine up my butt. I don't care about their parenting advice, or even strictly speaking their nutritional advice. I want someone who can diagnose and treat medical problems. I used to shop around by price too (though to to be honest with you, billing practice non-annoyances are generally things you have to shop around for an office manager for too--it's the staff that seals the deal for me, not the doctor.) but now that we have a self-contained HMO it's not relevant anymore.

If a doctor came with excellent references, a charge for a meet and greet would not deter me. If I was blind calling people from a website or phone book, eh, probably they would get put at the end of my list.

But I don't think that charging for one's time is indicative of the quality or lack thereof of the doctor. If it's going to cause you to resent them or dislike them, then don't waste their time and yours, just move on to the next name. Unless you're in an area where everyone charges, in which case oh well, they're all equal in that regard.

[mamadebug]

We paid for the meet and greet with our pediatrician, which is pretty normal in our area, I think. This was 5 years ago, but for some reason, it stands out in my mind that we paid $50. We had a 15 minute appointment with him. During that 15 minutes, he could have seen a patient instead and made more than double that. It seems fair to me.

I think part of the reason they charge, at least at this doctor's office (pretty large practice) is to deter parents from setting up a bunch of appointments, eating up a lot of office time on something other than direct patient care. That also seems fair to me.

[gcgirl]

Originally Posted by texmati

wow. all the ob's and ped's do free interviews, or meet and greet nights at least! If they are to busy to see me for free, or that uninterested in meeting me, than they are to busy to be my doctor.

Well, I called every one who was covered by insurance who I was willing to accept (based on geographic location and etc.) and NONE of them would do a free visit. So. Whatever.

[basje]

Mine was free, twenty minutes with office manager, met three np's and the ped interview was about 15 minutes.

[russsk]

Our ped met with us as his last appt of the day and spent a lot of time with us. He didn't charge us. I've had numerous meet and greets with midwives who didn't charge either, though one who did.

[Anna Phor]

$60 for a 30-45 minute prenatal group session with other parents-to-be. But we didn't end up going because our babe came early.

[newbymom05]

Most docs charge around here too. People/professionals value their time, what can you do. Half the docs on my insurance plan TRIPLE book and plan on spending 15 minutes per paying, scheduled patient, so I'm not surprised that they're going to spend time in leisurely/free chat.

[dachshund mom]

Free here for the ped and midwife, and both are in high demand. I'd be put off by it. Do they charge extra for vac visits if you're on an alt schedule, or for a weight check? We're in Houston, btw.

[NYCVeg]

In our old area, we had free visits with both peds we interviewed (one of whom, the one we went with, was an EXTREMELY high-demand ped, in a single-person practice, who rarely took on new patients). In our new area, the ped we wanted charged, so we just set it up as an initial visit--though this ped was referred to us by the former one and we had done a quite a bit of research, so we felt reasonably comfortable with her already.

I wouldn't take it as a bad or good sign either way. Some people charge and some don't, and I don't think it much matters.