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Why won't doctors give appointments in Puerto Rico? It is so frustrating to have to spend the entire day at the doctor's office whenever you have a routine appointment. (For anyone reading this who is new to PR, you have to get an appointment for the day but when you show up you put your name on a list and wait and wait until your turn. This seems to be true for all doctors and many dentists.)
Whenever I go in there are always about 40 or 50 people waiting and the wait time has almost always been four or more hours. I go about an hour early in the hope of getting in sooner but try as I might there are generally about 30 or more names ahead of mine. When you multiply this by the number of doctors in Puerto Rico (and there seems to be a lot) it is an amazing waste of time and productivity. How can so many people afford to waste so much time every time they go to the doctor?
On the positive side, I finally found a lab in Ponce where they use gloves when drawing blood.
I have heard others complain about this sort of thing as well. This is so third world. One would think that some of these people have better things to do than spend their entire day at a doctors office.
From my observations living there this has to do with the level of indigence of the median population down there. Chances are, they really have NOTHING else going on that day. Which leads to overuse of medical services on the part of the indigent and de facto indigent (working poor).
Doctors are not necessarily chumping at the bit to take care of these people in an efficient way either, as they know they'll be back tomorrow, and these doctors didn't get into their profession to bust their behinds like during residency, they're in it to throttle back and go golfing and boating (why else would you practice medicine in the caribbean, with the aforementioned 3rd world dynamics?), but that's for another thread.
Yes medical care sucks in the island for the median person. It is also no less price-gouging and expensive as your run of the mill health care service provider in the good ol USA, which is a double whammy. Gimme socialized health care and 150 million less people in this country any day (is that un-PC? ) Dang it, I think they call that Canada.....
Is getting medical care down there really as hard as claimed in the OP? Not even wearing gloves when drawing blood WTF? After seeing how messed up the EMS and emergency response system is I would at least hope the hospitals and doctors offices are halfway decent
Puerto Rico (and the other US territories) is in need of some massive overhauls to bring the standard of medical care, emergency response, and law enforcement systems more in line with the rest of the United States.
No appointments that is a fact. That is just the tip of the iceberg. However, as much as I agree that the systems are busted, but at the same time people's mentality must change. For some reason people here are very understanding while waiting all day at the doctors office, but blow a fuse when sitting for a minute at the red light. Something does not add up here, or is it just me?
No appointments that is a fact. That is just the tip of the iceberg. However, as much as I agree that the systems are busted, but at the same time people's mentality must change. For some reason people here are very understanding while waiting all day at the doctors office, but blow a fuse when sitting for a minute at the red light. Something does not add up here, or is it just me?
That's so funny you should say this. I was just thinking the other day how inconsistent it was that people can be so polite when it comes to wishing everyone "Buen Provecho (Bon Appetit)" when you are eating in a restaurant or "Buenas Tardes (Good Afternoon)" when they enter a waiting room or elevator and yet be so incredibly rude when it comes to driving.
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) Dang it, I think they call that Canada.....
