[Avista]

Originally Posted by Shimpy

My wife and I also signed up today and have our first apt. in August. They have very few doctors accepting new patients and we had to use Colony for an opening since our first choice Pinalles wasn't taking any new patients. I believe each doctor is limited to 1500 patients.

We're very pleased with The Villages Health. Hoping you will be too. We go to Colony. Found visits very pleasant and we so far have had very little waiting.

[tcxr750]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

here's the bad news---GET USED TO IT!!!!. Sounds like this particular physician had some communication issues that put her at a disadvantage in a competitive environment, however, it is estimated that out of 900,000 practicing clinicians in the US, 250,000 will leave in the next 3-5 years due to early retirement or alternative careers. Primary reason---overburdening government and insurance regulation. It's not only Obamacare, even though this may be the worst law ever passed, but the entire mindset that big government can do it better. They can't.
I am retiring next week, about 5 years early, primarily due to spouse's health concerns, but there is nothing in the current environment to keep me working. Like most of my colleagues, I have 13 years grade school, 4 years pre-med, 4 years medical school , 3 years Internal Medicine residency, and 28 years experience in primary care. Board certified NBME, ASIM, and professor of medicine at a medical school, so I think I have some idea of the situation. Medicine cannot be practiced by algorithm, if it could, we'd all be visiting a computer; judgment is a huge factor. Maybe it's ego, but most of us have better judgment than some GS7 sitting in a bureaucratic cubicle, making patient care decisions. Healthcare reform should have enhanced patient care, not hinder it, but then again that was never the goal of Obamacare anyway. 94% of physicians do a good job, 6% are either impaired or incompetent---I'm afraid we have thrown out the baby with the bathwater, and a quarter million other physicians apparently agree

Government can't do it better. Big Insurance can that's why they created HMO's in the eighties. Remember HMO's using denial of service in the eighties to increase profits?