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Originally Posted by gamby
I had a very bad experience in the village hospital last week;.....We've been here 2 months and are considering moving out of the area because I need quality medical care due to multiple medical issues. I don't see it here !
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Your eyesight is, regret to say, perfect about the general state of healthcare services for The Villages, particularly The Villages Hospital. This is one of the several reasons the Developer has teamed with the University of South Florida to establish a new healthcare system in the area. However, that solution is several years away from opening.
A number of Villagers visit Mayo Clinic Jacksonville for annual check-ups and then monitoring and coordination with the patient's local primary care doc throught the year. Our "local" primary care doc (for the last 8 years) is in Windermere; his is a so-called "concierge practice." We need to see him tomorrow; we call today; they give us a time; we drive one hour and get seen on time, no later than a 15 minute wait -- which beats ALL the unprofessional, uncaring and arrogant docs around here where you take 15 to 20 minutes to drive there and then wait for an hour and a half and more to be taken to a room and another half hour wait for the doc to condescend to see you. We have our primary care doc's cell phone number and can -- and do -- reach him 24x7 if we have an emergency.
Part of the new USF/Villages planned/desired healthcare system is to include a concierge doc component. Whether they can successfully -- for the patient -- pull it off remains to be seen. Successful concierge practices around the US are NOT institutional, they are entrepreneurial. The future Villages/USF healthcare system is going to be institutional; that's their challenge.
If you decide to move elsewhere in Florida seeking a quality healthcare environment, do NOT be misguided or misled by popular press lists such as the US News list of Best Hospitals in the US. In their 2012 list, for Florida they chose Tampa General Hospital. For knowledgeable healthcare management professionals personally suffering high cholesterol, reading that hospital rating caused more cardiac arrests than did their heart disease!
The Orlando area's Florida Hospital system is a much better area choice than is Tampa Bay. However, Florida Hospital's Celebration Health facility, which offers world-class high-tech destination medical specialty services, has a horrible waiting time problem in its ER, because Celebration Health is the closest ER trauma center to the theme parks, and everyone with a bleed or break or contusion of one kind or another gets sent there. Other Orlando hospital ERs are quicker with equal quality outcomes. There are, however, two concierge practices in Celebration and several in greater Orlando.
Good luck with your search and personal management of your healthcare resources.