Though much ballyhooed I found after two years neither the Village Health Care model or the physicians associated with it to be anything exceptional. The basic premise behind its existence is to keep you healthy. That is fine. They will talk to you spending more time then allocated in the traditional Primary Care Physician encounter. They will draw your blood twice each year and send it to an independent lab for testing. Most PCPs just write a lab order. More then a few of the physicians they employ are new to the area and do not know the specialists who have been practicing in it for years rendering referrals an iffy proposition. Yes, they employ some specialists, but they are few in number and hardly cover the entire basis of medical specialization. The model referred to earlier is to provide medical care to young, healthy active seniors. I honestly suggest you call the local hospitals and see if they have a referral recommendation protocol in place and might suggest some alternative PCPs, as well as the Villages Health Care. That is how I found two great specialists actually prior to finding a PCP. The big ones locally are The Villages Hospital and Leesburg Hospital. There are some other hospitals off campus as well, but not that far away.
And before someone else brings it up Villages Health Care no longer accepts my insurance since it is basic Medicare with a Supplement curiously enough provided by the same insurer that VHC now only accepts as a Medicare Advantage Plan provider. I did find another PCP outside the VHC system and am very confident with both his expertise and knowledge of the specialist community which services the area. Do your homework and keep in mind you will be subjected to a lot of propaganda associated with the VHC system emanating from the developer and in the local newspaper. Good alternatives do exist, you just have to do the research.
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