Rural area retirement - is it really a young person's game? (blog, retirees)
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come to long island , we have specialists every where . 20-30 minute drives are normal for getting any where here that is not what i would call not local to you
Very few rural places are a 40 minute drive from world class specialists and a Level 1 trauma center. What is this "quality healthcare facility" 40 minutes away? Most regional hospitals that serve rural areas are pretty lousy. Nobody any good wants to work there. The hospitals are teetering because they don't have enough private insurance patients to subsidize Medicaid (which loses money) and Medicare (which barely breaks even).
My parents lived in a small town slightly under an hour from Indianapolis. Dad had chest pain and went to the small community hospital ER. He was airlifted to one of Indy’s big med centers for stent etc,. His comment about all this? He didn’t realize how many lakes and ponds were around until that trip in the helicopter.
I wonder if being in these outlying communities may be quicker sometimes than actually living closer in a heavy traffic, congested area.
Very few rural places are a 40 minute drive from world class specialists and a Level 1 trauma center. What is this "quality healthcare facility" 40 minutes away?
Most regional hospitals that serve rural areas are pretty lousy. Nobody any good wants to work there. The hospitals are teetering because they don't have enough private insurance patients to subsidize Medicaid (which loses money) and Medicare (which barely breaks even).
Wow. Lots of blanket statements coming from a person that hasn't been here.
We seem to have a lot of small family practice clinics around. Our nearest city has two hospitals, one is a teaching hospital and the other is a care/comfort style hospital. We also seem to have a selection of joint replacement clinics and eye surgery clinics opening up. I guess it makes sense being the oldest state with the highest percentage of retirees in the nation.
Four years ago my PCP picked up that I had prostate cancer. The urologist is an hour away, for cancer it is not like I need ambulance service to that clinic. When I had my surgery it was at a new hospital just built with the DaVinci robotic operating theater, so it is fairly state-of-the-art. Again it was an hour away, but for a scheduled surgery, I am not convinced that I need it to be within a 15 minute drive.
Next week I start radiation treatments [my cancer has returned], they are scheduled at a cancer facility 30-minutes away. Again I am not sure how important it is to be close to a cancer facility.
Among our immediate neighbors, we know a lot of people who have had heart surgeries and various stents put in. It is an older population, so I think it goes with the territory to see a lot of joint replacements, heart surgeries, and eye surgeries, etc.
Here in Iowa, I live about 7 minutes from one of the top neurosurgeons in the country, who practices at 1 of 2 top-100 hospitals in my city. He has people from all over the Midwest coming to him for back surgery, even from Chicago. He is a home-grown Iowa farm boy who moved back to eastern Iowa after completing at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. We feel fortunate that he decided to stay here instead of going anywhere else in the country. I live near the center of the city but 5 minutes from rural, and we have lots of smaller towns surrounding a public University teaching hospital, nationally recognized, 20 miles south of me, that recruits physicians and specialists from all over the world. I see helicopters several times a day coming and going from the University Hospital where I work.
Last edited by smpliving; 02-15-2018 at 12:17 PM..
People keep saying it's important to be near a doctor, but if you need a specialist your chances of living near one (or more) in a large city are not great. Unless you can afford to live near downtown, or wherever the best medical center is, you will probably still face a twenty or thirty minute drive in traffic to get to your doctors office. Unless you think you are at serious risk of needing to be whisked to the nearest hospital at the drop of a hat I don't see more of a benefit to living in a city to be 'near' health care.
I think one of the main points is to avoid being distant from an Emergency Room of a hospital, not just focusing on being close to one's personal primary care doctor or one's specialist.
And yes, "being whisked to the nearest hospital at the drop of a hat" does certainly happen, is certainly necessary especially for heart attacks or strokes, and an important critical factor.
And one does not know ahead of time when one will need to be whisked away to an Emergency Room and a hospital! - especially in the case of heart attack and stroke, as examples.
Last edited by matisse12; 02-15-2018 at 01:16 PM..
This. People keep saying it's important to be near a doctor, but if you need a specialist your chances of living near one (or more) in a large city are not great. Unless you can afford to live near downtown, or wherever the best medical center is, you will probably still face a twenty or thirty minute drive in traffic to get to your doctors office. Unless you think you are at serious risk of needing to be whisked to the nearest hospital at the drop of a hat I don't see more of a benefit to living in a city to be 'near' health care.
There is an ETSU professor, Chris Dula, that has a public blog on his battle with brain cancer. He's receiving treatment at Duke. He's not able to drive now, and this has to be tough with his wife also missing work for his appointments there.
You might not have that many appointments, but having to go that far out has to get old and be difficult.
Quote:
Originally Posted by matisse12
I think one of the main points is to avoid being distant from an Emergency Room of a hospital, not just focusing on being close to one's personal primary care doctor or one's specialist.
And yes, "being whisked to the nearest hospital at the drop of a hat" does certainly happen, is certainly necessary especially for heart attacks or strokes, and an important critical factor.
There is a community hospital in the county in the OP, but bigger stuff will be going to Johnson City Medical Center or somewhere in Asheville. In a true emergency, these minutes matter.
I'm not sure we all need to pile around Mass General, but being an hour or more from a major local hospital as an older person is certainly rolling the dice.
I think one of the main points is to avoid being distant from an Emergency Room of a hospital, not just focusing on being close to one's personal primary care doctor or one's specialist.
And yes, "being whisked to the nearest hospital at the drop of a hat" does certainly happen, is certainly necessary especially for heart attacks or strokes, and an important critical factor.
And one does not know ahead of time when one will need to be whisked away to an Emergency Room and a hospital! - especially in the case of heart attack and stroke, as examples.
A friend of mine just had a stroke a few months ago...age 65. Another friend went to Cancun with her husband. He was a jogger and in great shape. He got the flu and died of a heart attack before reaching the hospital. I had a BIL who died of a heart attack. He went to a local doctor who miss-diagnosed and he died suddenly at home the next day.
Sudden potential fatal events can occur suddenly. Clearly the odds get worse with age. I live near first rate medical care. My wife and I are cautious when we travel. A couple of years ago I had to drive her 300 miles to an airport to return home. Fortunately she checked out OK, but the local healthcare was virtually non-existent. The nearest hospital had 17 beds. She needed to be checked out with a CT scan for possible recurrence of diverticulitis.
I used to work with a couple about my age that are serious outdoors enthusiasts. They recently bought a small house between Erwin and Flag Pond, TN, in the mountains. She works in Kingsport, about an hour away, and he works closer.
There is very little out that way. The nearest Walmart and community hospital are probably about thirty minutes away. No grocery stores. The nearest gas station is probably ten miles away. Road plowing in the winter and any other sort of maintenance is going to be minimal at best. There's virtually no one out there and it is essentially unspoiled wilderness.
This place is fine for a young couple that wants to be out in the middle of nowhere. For a senior, aging out here seems like it would be a nonstarter. A doctor's office is an hour away. Getting around in the winter in the snow is going to be a chore. The nearest major hospital would probably be at least an hour over narrow mountain roads.
The views are wonderful from their Facebook post. It's near several creeks. It's what people think of when they think of Tennessee country living, but it doesn't seem like it would be viable for many seniors to age in place there.
More or less sounds like my story, last month we started our second year on our mountain in WNC.
Moved from the flatlands of FL to our mountainside. If we last a few years, it will have been worth it. I figure if we must sell in the future, we’ll sell out at a profit.
For older folks with acreage, it may be a young mans game if you can’t afford to hire out some of the required tasks. With many acres, comes much work.
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