[RoyReno]

We are giving some consideration to relocating to the Las Vegas area from Reno. A key factor for us is healthcare. We are retired and on standard Medicare with good supplemental insurance. Based on recent experiences over the past 2-3 years: [1] What is your opinion on the quality of healthcare in Las Vegas? [2] How about specialties such as cardiology? [3] When symptoms are presented to a provider is their diagnosis accurate? [4] How long to you have to wait to get an appointment with a primary care provider preferably a doctor vs. PA or APN? [5] How long for a specialist? [6] How is hospital care in Las Vegas? Thank you for your responses, Roy.

[airics]

Originally Posted by RoyReno

We are giving some consideration to relocating to the Las Vegas area from Reno. A key factor for us is healthcare. We are retired and on standard Medicare with good supplemental insurance. Based on recent experiences over the past 2-3 years: [1] What is your opinion on the quality of healthcare in Las Vegas? [2] How about specialties such as cardiology? [3] When symptoms are presented to a provider is their diagnosis accurate? [4] How long to you have to wait to get an appointment with a primary care provider preferably a doctor vs. PA or APN? [5] How long for a specialist? [6] How is hospital care in Las Vegas? Thank you for your responses, Roy.

I had open heart surgery at Summerlin hospital 4 years ago, my surgeon, Nancy Donahue was great. The hospital was decent too..

Since then, I think the quality has gone down. I have HPN with an HMO. Urgent care has been the place for me to go... To visit my primary... who is TERRIBLE.... is a 2-3 month wait... If I see the pa or apn, its about a month...

Specialist is another month after referral.
I was at Centennial Hospital last December....I would rate them below average.

In other words, the quality of healthcare here in my opinion is way down. But then again, it might be my insurance.

[waltman]

Your question is incredibly difficult to answer. There are so many personal experiences and subjective impressions.

All I can say is that when we retired to LV, we were extremely unhappy with our healthcare experiences. - overwhelmed primary practitioners, long waits for appointments, strange experiences with specialists, etc.

Some friends who are retired medical professionals were kind enough to explain how things work - as with so many things in this town the key is money, plenty of money.

A good place to start spreading the love is to sign up with a concierge physician. You pay an annual fee, in our case $1500 per person. This is in addition to regular insurance payments for services rendered. In return our primary care physician limits his number of patients to a maximum of 600. We can always get an appointment the same or next day.

The doctor isn't rushed, on average he will spend 30 minutes with you. His staff is helpful, kind, compassionate, personal and relaxed.

Should you need a specialist, they have a network of well qualified doctors and will get you an apointment very, very quickly.

We also made sure to get the most expensive and fanciest insurance program with the biggest network of participating physicians. This proved to be increadibly useful. We never had any discussions with Aetna regarding the need for a procedure.

When my wife was dieing of liver cancer Dr. Terry was incredibly helpful, investing a great deal of time helping me navigate the system, interpreting what was going on and helping us make the proper decision on when to terminate life support.

If you plan to die in Las Vegas - Nathan Adelson Hospice is a wonderful place. Beautiful, serene facility. Kind, compassionate, well qualified staff. I am eternally grateful, that we were able to get my wife out of the ICU and allow her to spend her final hours in a peaceful, home like atmosphere.

[NLVgal]

United Healthcare owns the LV market for healthcare. They required people to go Dr. Desei for gastrointestinal problems in order to stay in network and be covered. He gave thirty people deadly hepatitis C because the clinic reused syringes to save money because of Sierra / UHG's obscenely low reimbursement rates.

Any questions?

[foundapeanut]

^^^yeah he burning in hell right now.

Originally Posted by airics

I had open heart surgery at Summerlin hospital 4 years ago, my surgeon, Nancy Donahue was great. The hospital was decent too..

Since then, I think the quality has gone down. I have HPN with an HMO. Urgent care has been the place for me to go... To visit my primary... who is TERRIBLE.... is a 2-3 month wait... If I see the pa or apn, its about a month...

Specialist is another month after referral.
I was at Centennial Hospital last December....I would rate them below average.

In other words, the quality of healthcare here in my opinion is way down. But then again, it might be my insurance.

No offense but your insurance SUCKS. HPN is United hell care. They could care less about anyone. They get worse every year. When I had them through a group, my doctor told me I would be better off without health insurance than to have them. I work in LA sometimes and I inquired about who to call if something happened over there. They told me to get in my car and drive to NV! That isn't possible for most emergencies. Have you inquired whether you are covered out of town. I never dreamed my group plan through the chamber would offer something like this. And this was the gold plan.

If you aren't buying through the exchanges you are not getting all that the ACA covers.
20% of those buyers don't get federal aid. I'm one of them.

Hubs and I have great doctors. But we have great insurance.
Some we got lucky right out of the gate, others we had to search out. My husband loves his cardiologist - Dr La Mothe. We aren't afraid to switch if we get a bad one. I've had about 9 internist since 2000. Finally found a great one and got a wonderful referral from her for a gyno. I feel like a new woman, was needing hormones.

Just guessing but I would think doctors here, you'd have more choices than Reno.

[yellowsnow]

My cousin who has Medicare goes to the doctor more than anyone I have ever known. Blows me away. The only issue he has is arthritis of the knee and yet he regularly sees a cardiologist and a podiatrist. Seems like he has lab work done 3 or 4 times a year too. He thinks medical here is pretty good. But he likes the attention.

I keep wondering why they let him limp around when they could just replace the knee but I am not a knee doctor!

[2sleepy]

Originally Posted by foundapeanut

Just guessing but I would think doctors here, you'd have more choices than Reno.

We lived in Reno for 14 years and one of the reasons we moved was the lousy healthcare. My husband had United Healthcare medicare advantage and it was horrible, he changed to Humana and it wasn't much better, he finally got an Anthem medicare advantage PPO and he liked that a lot but he had trouble getting appointments to see specialists.

I had a Calif. retired employee medicare supplement PPO which is an awesome plan, and there were a lot of doctors in the network. But seeing a specialist unless it was a dermatologist just sucked. I don't think it was a problem with my insurance, there just don't seem to be enough specialists for the population.

[foundapeanut]

I have anthem now, not medicare, and I have had no issues. Maybe a couple weeks out.
Here they ask about your insurance first before making an appointment. So maybe they do some screening. MY gyno only takes Anthem or cash. Weird.

If I end up waiting longer than 30 minutes, I'm done with that doctor. Went to a uroligist once, he had 8 waiting rooms. Old people were opening their doors and yelling in the halls and slamming the doors. Turns out their was a young man terminally ill they were trying to move and he was in a lot of pain. I waited an hour before the doctor came in & told me. I'd rather be in my position waiting an hour that that poor young mans. Did end up seeing the young guy outside with his nurse, smoking. He was a skeleton so if he wanted a smoke it didn't matter at that point.

[mojavedxer]

Your options are all dependent on your insurance. Had over a half dozen primary care doctors in the last six years under Health Care Partners Nevada. Finally found a good doctor that happens to be in my network that runs his own practice and dont have to deal with all the hassle Health Care Partners or Health Plan NV makes you deal with.

[mojavedxer]

Originally Posted by NLVgal

United Healthcare owns the LV market for healthcare. They required people to go Dr. Desei for gastrointestinal problems in order to stay in network and be covered. He gave thirty people deadly hepatitis C because the clinic reused syringes to save money because of Sierra / UHG's obscenely low reimbursement rates.

Any questions?

And he is still running a practice today. He is the few on a very short list gastro specialists that take Medicare, Medicare in the valley go figure.