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Not a factor. I'm healthy and intend to stay that way. But then, I haven't actually moved anywhere permanently as a geezer.
However, if I were to become inflicted with multiple myeloma, as a friend was 20 years ago, then perhaps I'd then choose to move elsewhere for convenient and quality treatment.
That's what he did, moving from Kapoho, Hawaii to Tucson, Arizona. He's doing great, BTW.
In regards to brightdoglover's post, another friend of mine living many miles outside of a remote Alaskan town suffered a burst appendix and damn near died before he could get to the hospital in Juneau.
So, the possibility of a sudden emergency situation arising could become more important as a person ages. OTOH, there are plenty of old folks in rural AK settings who wouldn't for a moment entertain the idea of moving to an area with better health care services. As for him, he remains in the latter camp.
It's interesting to see such a wide range of attitudes towards this issue, with some people considering access of paramount concern while others assign it little or no importance.
It’s one of the reasons I’m staying in the Bay Area. Talented people, including my doctors, like to live here.
I’d have no hesitation moving back to Boston either, for the same reasons.
A family member just went through an end of life situation in middle America, and it wasn’t pretty. No specialists within hours, no inpatient hospice, having to sit in the ER and wait for simple procedures that should be appointments (and contracting Covid as a terminal 82 year old while there). The list goes on and on.
I’m not exaggerating when I say my dogs got better end of life care here in the Bay Area than my family member did in middle America. It’s pathetic.
Education and health care need to be readily available to all, not just those of us who can afford to live in high cost of living areas.
I would want to assure rapid stroke intervention, otherwise I don't really care. Mobile stroke units (big trucks that incorporate a CT scanner, medical staff, and everything needed for immediate treatment except embolectomy - but they can drive to the hospital for embolectomy) may make geography irrelevant in the future as far as stroke treatment goes, though mobile stroke units are expensive.
Funny you should mention that. Recently I saw a mobile stroke unit deployed at a patient's house. I didn't know Sutter Health even had mobile stroke units, but I found it reassuring.
Having a medical center close by with emergency room, urgent care, etc. was definitely high on our list. Our town of 10,000 has that, but for certain procedures and specialties, we have to travel to the nearest larger city of Green Bay. At first I thought that might be a problem, but it turns out it's an easy drive, and it's only a little over an hour away. And if we can't or don't want to drive, there are a couple reliable choices for transportation.
When we lived in Minneapolis, there was more choice of care providers, and no dearth of specialists, but because of the greater population numbers, getting an appointment took the same amount of time as it does here. And it was often more difficult to actually get to a specialist because of the traffic. There were a few occasions when it was a real nightmare of tangled highway systems and creepy parking ramps to get to the care needed. It's far less of a hassle here.
It’s one of the reasons I’m staying in the Bay Area. Talented people, including my doctors, like to live here.
I’d have no hesitation moving back to Boston either, for the same reasons. .
I too am blessed with good medical care in SoCal. Both my doctor and dentist were graduate of local nationally well-known schools with high reputation. My sister has a rare form of rheumatoid arthritis but she was fortunate to find a specialist doctor at UCLA who's a national expert in that field to diagnose and treat her. My folks are in their 90s and has top cardiologists to provide care when needed. When you're sick, the last thing you need is this nagging thought of how competent are the doctor who's treating you.
Like you said, top talents gravitate toward major metropolitan areas motivated by either money or success, or both, and doctors are no different. When this compares to Midwest/ South we moved from, where the emergency room doctor openly admitted to us he has no idea what's going on, the SoCal quality of doctors is very reassuring.
I worked for the regional hospital system here for many years. When I took the position back in 2016, there were two regional hospital systems, and the local hospitals were generally fairly well-regarded, when considering the area's demographic issues.
Those two systems then merged, and quality metrics have consistently declined. Back in 2018, right as the merger was taking place, the three area tertiary hospitals all had either 3 or 4 star (out of 5) ratings from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, a government rating body. Today, two of those three hospitals are 1 star (only 5% of the nation's hospitals are rated this poorly), with the other being a 2.
We used to have two level 1 trauma centers. That's now done to one - the former level one trauma center has been downgraded to a level three, and the other level two has also been downgraded to a three.
Many specialities no longer have on-call coverage or dedicated teams. Back in May, my grandmother had a stroke, and was taken to one of the tertiary hospitals. She was not seen for over ten hours. My last major project before leaving was implementing a new software system that the hospital switchboards use to contact on-call providers. I specifically remembered testing a stroke call group with that switchboard supervisor at the hospital my grandmother was taken to. I asked someone there to check if a stroke alert was sent to the on-call team, and it turns out that this hospital had dropped on-call stroke coverage between when this system was implemented and May.
I saw a Facebook post from a local lady whose grandmother had died at the same hospital. I don't remember exactly what was wrong with the grandmother, but in any event, the switchboard contacted the wrong provider for the on-call need. The person who was contacted was not on-call, never responded, and the correct team weren't contacted until hours later. The patient ended up dying. The switchboard supervisor has no clinical or call center background (she was a mortgage loan originator before coming there, and has always been in over her head), the staff turnover constantly, and they have no support from the administration.
Staffing levels at our area hospital system have gone down the toilet. Clinical staffing is a problem everywhere, but it seems especially acute here, and even typical office jobs are having constant turnover. That switchboard pays their operators less than what they'd make at Aldi scanning groceries. Experienced nursing staff have left for better paying opportunities elsewhere, leaving the system heavily reliant on expensive travel nurses. The tech lead on a $30 million project that I was on left, and they ended up hiring him back as a contractor for three times what he was making. Pre-COVID, RN-BSNs are out of college made $18/hr. The IT team I was on doesn't even half the staff that it did a year ago. Key people throughout the organizations have left in droves. A well-known Harvard trained cardiologist left recently after assuming leadership of the organization's cardiovascular institute just two months ago. Almost every day I hear of some significant doctor leaving the organization for various reasons, and seemingly more often those spats are becoming public.
If you have a complicated situation, it's likely there isn't sufficient local expertise at the regional system to deal with it. I'm going to a provider two hours today to deal with something because I simply don't trust the quality of the regional system.
It's not like there is even a choice here - this hospital system is the only option for acute, inpatient care in a geographic area the size of New Jersey, so you're driving a minimum of an hour and a half to two hours away to get an "other" option. There are some smaller provider groups, but they are limited and do not have the facilities that the big monopoly does. A lot of folks simply can't go that far for a variety of reasons, so they're stuck with the local system.
As people age, they're more likely to have medical needs. The local system here is woefully inadequate for anything other than the most basic of care. How big of a factor was the local medical system in your selection of an area?
"The switchboard" does not contact anyone. Generally it is an operator. You know all of what you post here because of in-house gossip and FB postings? So you post it as facts?
We live rurally, but have some pretty good hospitals and healthcare between an hour and two hours away. We have a regional hospital within 20-30 minutes for emergencies. We have an excellent primary care physician within 10 minutes. We also have med-evac insurance so we can get to a better place if need be.
Not a factor. I'm healthy and intend to stay that way. But then, I haven't actually moved anywhere permanently as a geezer.
However, if I were to become inflicted with multiple myeloma, as a friend was 20 years ago, then perhaps I'd then choose to move elsewhere for convenient and quality treatment.
That's what he did, moving from Kapoho, Hawaii to Tucson, Arizona. He's doing great, BTW.
In regards to brightdoglover's post, another friend of mine living many miles outside of a remote Alaskan town suffered a burst appendix and damn near died before he could get to the hospital in Juneau.
So, the possibility of a sudden emergency situation arising could become more important as a person ages. OTOH, there are plenty of old folks in rural AK settings who wouldn't for a moment entertain the idea of moving to an area with better health care services. As for him, he remains in the latter camp.
It's interesting to see such a wide range of attitudes towards this issue, with some people considering access of paramount concern while others assign it little or no importance.
I am not a fan of remote living. I don't want to break a bone, cut myself badly by accident, have an appendicitis or a kidney stone and face a 45 minute or more agonizing drive to the hospital. I don't want to pay for the enormous expense of a medivac, either.
For those who want to take that chance and think the risk is worth it, more power to them. I am not that person.
At the same time, I see no need to locate myself next to a state of the art medical facility.
I moved to be near family, at father's not-so-subtle insistence. Big mistake. I hope to move again within the yr, for several reasons.. One of them is lack of good healthcare. That's a HUGE need for seniors...at least for me. I'm healthy now, but won't always be.
It’s one of the reasons I’m staying in the Bay Area. Talented people, including my doctors, like to live here.
I’d have no hesitation moving back to Boston either, for the same reasons.
A family member just went through an end of life situation in middle America, and it wasn’t pretty. No specialists within hours, no inpatient hospice, having to sit in the ER and wait for simple procedures that should be appointments (and contracting Covid as a terminal 82 year old while there). The list goes on and on.
I’m not exaggerating when I say my dogs got better end of life care here in the Bay Area than my family member did in middle America. It’s pathetic.
Education and health care need to be readily available to all, not just those of us who can afford to live in high cost of living areas.
Agreed.
Doctors prefer to live where they'll be paid. Also, my kids and grandkids are nearby.
Upon considering places for retirement, access to nearby competent medical care was a must.
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