Hi - My husband and I are both under 65. The Villages health care latched on to us - We have United Health Care PPO. It must have been the type of insurance you have. No doctor in Florida has turned us down. Our monthly charge for our insurance is $1350 a month. But it is a lousy policy - we pay $100 deductible when seeing a specialist and then 20% of the remaining balance. We pay a lot in addition to our policy cost. Our experience with TV Healthcare and seeing a primary care doctor has been exceptionally poor. Whenever we need to make an appointment with the doctor we have to see a nurse practitioner. We have been misdiagnosed on several occasions, sent for unnecessary tests per doctors at Shands when we ended up there because of poor care at The Villages Health Care. Moving here from Chicago the health care protocols followed here seem 3rd world. My husband had his blood work done at The Villages Health Care and the nurse put the tubes of blood in her pocket without any label. Typical protocol is to read the name and birthdate on the label and confirm identifying information with the patient before taking blood. The results of the blood work was inconsistent with our past results so we ended up getting our blood work redone at Shands and the results didn't reflect what we got from TV. The doctor at Shands jokingly said are you sure they didn't mix up the tubes and we thought - hmmm no we are not sure that didn't happen. In short - don't feel bad you didn't get a doctor to treat you at The Villages Health Care. Although the people are very nice there you will find better health care outside The Villages. I would look at a University Health Care System like UF Health Shands, University of South Florida, or Orlando. UF Health has physicians in Ocala, Summerfield, Gainesville. University of South Florida has doctors with offices as close as Wesley Chapel. What I do is I keep a doctor close by if I get a cold or flu and for specialty care I drive to see specialists connected to University Hospitals that use research based treatments. However, I went to The Villages for what I was told was a cold and was really sick. I was told to expect to have a cough for a month. I ended up at Shands because I was in horrible pain and couldn't keep my head up. Turns out I needed antibiotics which the physician's assistant at TV would not give me. I had an ear ache and went to TV. I was prescribed an antibiotic drop with steroids in it. The pain intensified and I ended up at an ENT in Orlando who told me you should never put a steroid in your ear if there is an infection because the steroid takes down swelling and with pus in the ear from the infection there is no room for the swelling to go down so it can damage the drum of the ear. I was told to stop the drops immediately and was treated with an oral antibiotic. I have a long list of things I could write about mistakes at The Villages. The physician's assistants there have less education than vets yet they diagnose and more times than not with my husband and I they have made mistakes. I have had good health care outside of The Villages. I suffered a finger fracture where the ligament separated and got really good treatment by a hand specialist at Shands. Yes the drive was long to get there and back but my finger works perfectly now.. I had a series of removeable casts that were remade at different angle degrees every two weeks and was given daily exercises that were changed every two weeks to do in warm water so that the finger would heal properly. At some point when I get older and can't drive outside TV for good health care I will probably end up moving out and going to an area with better health care.
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