I've heard of a food desert, and donated dollars and fresh fruit and veggies when I've been asked to help. I think of myself as relatively blessed when it comes to having what I need when I need it. The essentials are ready at hand, or available at the end of a telephone line or a short ride in the car. We turned our backs on buying a beautiful home half way up Mt Tam in Marin because what if we forgot that we needed milk and we had to drive all the way down the twisty road i the dark.
We chose Tucson for many reasons. Among those reasons was the obvious proliferation of the various arms of the medical profession. Every main artery had clusters of doctors in little attached houses, side by side for miles at a time. We figured this was a prime space for doctors to practice; the population skews older and God knows old people need doctors.
While it is still true that old people need doctors, there don't seem to be very many of them willing to take on new patients. My fabulous GP is moving to Scottsdale for an offer she couldn't refuse (I have three kids and this is a lot more money) and her practice has been unsuccessful in locating her successor.
There are just no docs out there was her reply when I asked who I'd be seeing next year. She could still care for me via telehealth and a yearly trip up to Scottsdale, but we agreed that that plan is less than ideal. The practice is working on strategies to cover her patients, but she agreed that it would be a good idea to start searching on my own.
I asked about a new company that's offering services specifically for the elderly. She shook her head and said she'd not heard anything good about them.
Most of my friends are in the same boat; I was the one with the good care that made them jealous. Now, I'm adrift.
Concierge medicine would make sense if we had serious, ongoing needs. But we don't. We need shots and COVID care when the situation warrants it, but otherwise we spend most of our year doctor-free.
Now we are really doctor free. It's an uncomfortable position. Dr K and Not-Kathy like their new guy, but I really want a woman. No one else has a referral. I'm kind of angry at the practice for not planning ahead for this misadventure, but if there are really no docs out there what can they do?
And, more important, what are we going to do?
We are facing that question as we had kept our Oregon primary care doctor at a clinic we had used for over forty years. We thought we'd be better off finding a doctor down here but that problem got more complex when our doctor there retired. Another issue for down here is finding a clinic that takes our version of insurance. Does not matter that it's the same insurance but it's the version that counts...
ReplyDeleteoops forgot to dot the i's for Rain Trueax
DeleteSame up here in Prescott. It's very frustrating finding a new doctor but I finally did.
DeleteI knew it was you! Inter-state insurance is an issue we ran up against when we moved here in 2006. Who knew insurance was state specific??
Deletea/b
our problem wasn't that our insurance was in a different state but that we have an HMO and they only accept PTO (I think that's the right initial but it is physician driven not patient.
DeleteDo you have large hospitals in Tucson? The hospital. might be able to recommend one of their doctors. Fresno was once a medical desert but started raising their own. We now have two doctor academies in the high schools. We have medical training facility through the community college,. UCSan Francisco now has its own medical school here in affiliation with a regional hospital. Young medical students are coming and finding they like life here and are staying. Surely Tucson has something similar going on.
ReplyDeleteIn our large health care provider system we have doctors, but it takes a long time to get an appointment. We don't have enough new doctors for our aging population and it is going to be a national problem.
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