Hello all and help please
I've been out in Ontario ( Guelph and Milton ) accompanying my GP husband while visiting potential practices he may join

We have been baffled by the empty drs waiting rooms as compared to the fairly well attended waiting rooms back home in the UK ( even occasionally with queues going outside in his current shopping mall based practice, with 'walk in' centre in the UK...)

Our initial thought was that the drs are not busy enough or getting enough work and that the practices may not be the right one for him if there's no work?

Of course this may be entirely wrong and is where your comments and observations will be helpful please
We visited surgeries between 11am and 3pm; also we've already been told winter months are the busiest

Any observations and comments or your views on how busy gps are or how 'lively' their waiting rooms are would be very welcome
Thanks

We gave up looking for a GP and just attend the Walk in clinics now. We often wait for more than an hour and quite often get short shrift. OH has a problem with his eye atm and was told, 'What do you want me to do about it?' when he went back for a follow up. After 3 months of waiting he has finally got an appointment to see an 'eye doctor'.

We have an excellent GP. She has gone above and beyond for us on numerous occasions. To see her one expects a one hour wait in the waiting room at least. Irritating but better than having no GP IMHO.

I attend a large clinic in Guelph (Dawson Road).

They have a different system to the UK so no one is in the waiting room for long.

Once you arrive and check in at the desk you are given a buzzer thing with a flashing light. You sit in the waiting room until it starts flashing and vibrating (I have never needed to wait for more than 5 mins). This is the cue to go to the door where I am met by a nurse and sat in one of the appointment rooms. The nurse asks me a few questions and then leaves me to wait for the GP. This wait is much longer (like a normal UK waiting time), but I can appreciate not being stuck in the waiting room with all of the other sick people and a nurse has already asked me my main problems. If this system is in place at other GP clinics, it would give the perception of an empty waiting room but in reality the patients are just waiting in individual appointment rooms.

Around mid-morning/mid-afternoon our doc will usually be running at least half an hour late and you can guess this from the 8 or 9 patients waiting.

But there are plenty of times when one hasn't been able to get one of the first appointments morning or afternoon and one arrives, expecting a wait but happy to get an appointment and sees an empty waiting room.

Then there are other times it all looks very busy and things are actually ticking over nicely as some of the patients are to see the nurse and not him.

In short, it could look really busy but might not be or it could look as quiet as it is. The only thing you can be sure of is it can't be busy if you see no patients.

Of course, that might mean he's not there!

Thanks for the replies so far
An empty GP surgery waiting room is certainly a worry as drs here mostly get paid 'fee for service' ie paid for seeing patients

Our doc used to do something like that, but without the buzzer thing. Patients could be in one of three rooms. Anyone with a spouse or child and that could be removing 6 people from the waiting room...which was fairly small anyway.

They do something similar with dentists except that the dentist actually works on the patients, flitting from one to another as needed.

"Now let's just pull this tooth...oops, no that's her in the next room."

Same here. There's a choice and I think most opt for the fee per patient. There's a real incentive for the doc to double up on appointment times. Maybe by doing that other days are quiet?

The big variations in billing from one doc to the next is being looked at in this province. Dodgy practices are suspected.

This is a big issue in my opinion re patient care. I have it good authority that there is a terrible lack of care (verging on negligence) by a fair amount of GP's. A very good friend of mine will see 25-30 people a day. That is busy. There are several docs at her practice billing for 50-60 people day. Patient notes are not written up, minimum questions asked, lack of interest, no follow ups. They are earning a shed lad of dosh though. What is the incentive to provide good patient care when you can earn $200k +++ by doing the bare minimum? I'm in the wrong job!

But isn't Alberta still short of gp's? I know in the south they are always harping on about it. It can take me anywhere up to 3weeks to book an appointment or over 3 hours at a walk in !

In most of Canada there seems to be a shortage of GPs. It seems inconceivable that a GP, if they have a choice in where to locate, would not be able to find sufficient patients to make a viable practice.

Healthcare and General Practice is very different here. I am in BC and it does vary in each Province.
I am an RN, and worked as a Practice Nurse in the UK. They do not exist here, GPs hire MOAs (medical office assistants) but they are not nurses.
So the GP does all those tasks that your Practice Nurse does in the UK, that may account for the timings and the waiting room. Also, 11-3 may not be the best time to assess it as well. Many of them close for an hour at lunchtime.
Here in Victoria, we have a huge shortage of Family Practice Drs, many people rely on walk-in clinics, and they can vary in the quality of care they offer.

Problem I find with walk in clinics is the lack of on going care. My OH had severe depression, he was given tablets, 6 month supply, end of care. After slmost a year of me nagging and eventually almost leaving him he went and got different tablets, again 6 month supply, end of care, thankfully these ones worked, however he has stopped taking them, because he feels fine. I'm just waiting for the crash.

I find walk ins fine for quick fixes to easy illnesess but awful for more complicated ones.

I went to the walk-in clinic on Speedvale, in Guelph. There were no end of patients waiting there. The place is nominally open until 8pm but, from 5, they were turning patients away saying that they had their quota for the day. The receptionist said that was usual. I've only been the once but my wife goes for a regular injection (administered by a nurse without seeing a doctor) and says she usually sees a couple of people turned away in the half hour or so she waits. I would have guessed this experience to be typical.

The walk in clinic I used to use was on the edge of china town, your first language seemed to be used as a priority system
If you were Chinese , you went to the front of the line

I've only tried to use another one once , it's part of a chain. They put the current waiting times on the website. I thought I got lucky when I saw the current times at 15 minutes. When I arrived I was informed that it was " tele health video conference consultation"
That is a video link to a doctor !!!
They got offended when I laughed and walked out