When she makes a doctor's appointment, Cherie Kerr makes it clear that she better not be kept waiting long.
She said she usually tries to schedule the first appointment of the day, or the first one after lunch. But if the doctor is going to be late, she insists the staff give her a call -- lest the office be billed for her time in the waiting room.
"I call ahead and I tell them in a nice way that I will not be able to wait," Kerr, who owns a small boutique public relations firm in Santa Ana, Calif., told 鶹ý. "I've only deducted my time twice, but I've warned six or seven other doctors that I would bill them if I wait."
Kerr says she's been using this system for years, the first time in 1969 when a pediatrician delayed her four hours. She refused to pay the $75 bill, because, as a freelance writer, she lost more than that amount in needed dollars during that wasted time.
More recently, she billed her eye doctor about $150 for about a 45-minute wait time -- deducting the amount off an invoice totaling a couple of hundred dollars for the visit.
"Now, it's funny," Kerr says. "They'll always give me a time when they know I'll be the first appointment."
Kerr's technique has received much media attention recently, as a CNN report expanded on a wrote about a friend who bills her doctor the equivalent of her hourly wage -- $47 -- for wasted time. It has stirred much debate over whether doctors should reimburse patients for their time.
Wible said physicians should apologize for delays -- and pay up if patients invoice them for excessive waiting room time.
"Fortunately," she wrote, "most patients don't bill at the doctor's hourly rate."
Other physicians have been more preemptive in their approaches to easing the pain of having to rifle through old magazines or watch TVs that loop healthcare programming for longer than desired.
Steve Fallek, MD, a plastic surgeon in New York City and northern New Jersey, gives out Starbucks gift cards if patients wait more than 15 or 20 minutes. He says he tallies their wait with an egg timer.
So far, he estimates handing out 20 to 40 cards -- most of which will cover the price of a cup of coffee. It's been well-received over the last year and a half that it's been implemented, he says.
Fallek also tries to prevent gift-card-giving by text messaging patients if he's behind schedule.
"It's a competitive environment," he says. "You have to keep your patients happy."
Yet he admits that a surgery practice doesn't necessarily have the same time constraints or pressures as a primary care office.
Issamar Ginzberg, a rabbi in New York who consults on business and practice management issues, says he doesn't mind waiting at his physician's office because it offers wireless Internet.
"As long as I know that my time is respected and that I can work while I wait, I won't bill doctors for waiting time," he told 鶹ý.
He worries that if billing doctors "becomes a craze," they will, in turn, start charging other patients more. Instead, they should focus on prevention, he says: install wireless routers, ensure good cellphone service.
Lee Green, MD, of the University of Michigan, says his institution tracks waiting times and works diligently to keep them down.
"It's quite uncommon for me to be even 10 minutes behind," he wrote in an email to 鶹ý and ABC News.
Few practices have that luxury, Green says, and part of the problem of long wait times is due to a shortage of primary care doctors.
"Yes, primary care doctors could schedule fewer patients," he wrote, "but where would the others go? There just aren't enough of us to go around, and there won't be until we fix our broken healthcare system."
Others blame reimbursement schedules and extensive paperwork for delays. Doctors need to cram patients into 15 minute blocks, and complete an average of seven minutes of paperwork for each of them in order to make money and finish everything that's required of them, according to Deane Waldman, MD, of the University of New Mexico.
Governments and insurers "make money by our inefficiencies," Waldman said, adding that moving towards a system that reimburses based on health outcomes may mitigate some of those issues.
Thus, since long wait times are essentially a system issue, Waldman doesn't agree with reimbursing patients.
"We need to discuss [the problems with the healthcare system]," he said, "not jump to knee-jerk conclusions."
Gary Seto, MD, who has a private practice in Pasadena, Calif., is currently attempting an alternative to the present system. He practices a simplified version of boutique medicine, booking only about 10 patients per day, who get at least 30 minutes each.
They pay a $125 annual fee per family, as well as visit costs.
Though he says he rarely is late to an appointment, when he does miss one or keep a patient waiting too long, he gives them $25 -- the amount he charges for no-shows.
"It's only fair," he says, "to give them that fee."
This article was developed in collaboration with ABC News. 