Healthcare due dilligence is very important before moving to the villiages
 

Anyone moving to The Villages needs to check out the health care situation first. Good physicians are few and far between and difficult to find. A physician told me today that general practitioners in the area are "sketchy." The much touted Villages Health Care system only accepts United Healthcare Advantage plan for primary care. The Villages Health care doctors sign 2-year non-competes. So, even if you have the correct insurance, if your dr. quits or is terminated by The Villages Health Care, you are out of luck if you want to continue seeing that physician because they are no longer permitted to practice medicine in the area.
If you are thinking of living at the villages make sure that you can get good healthcare before you leave you home city

Not true. VHC accepts Florida Blue Medicare Advantage and one other Medicare Advantage Plan (Aetna, IIRC).

I have Florida Blue and have been going to The Villages Health since we moved here.

How long have you lived here?

health care in the Villages
 

I moved here in 2008. I have NEVER had ANY problems with my healthcare providers. Actually, I found the care in the Villages far better due to the fact the doctors treat seniors and know what they are doing. They are not delivering babies!

We have Medicare and AARP supplemental insurance. Would we be able to find doctors in the Villages area?

Yes, you will have no problem finding providers who accept Medicare.

Advantage Plans have risks. They are great as long as you are healthy but not so good for a long term illness or significant medical issues. Good luck getting first line cancer care if on an Advantage Plan.

Stick with standard Medicare if you can afford it.

How far outside the newer sections would one travel to find providers who take Medicare with supplemental not Advantage Plans

I think there a large number of providers both in The Villages or very close by who take Medicare. Any provider who doesn't accept Medicare will not get much business. The only issue with original Medicare is that you cannot use the Villages Health system for your primary care provider. But, you can use their specialists.

It is a fact that health care is different in TV than in areas where many of us came from. I don't think that necessarily means that the physicians are any less skilled, but we've found in several instances that support staff services; scheduling, record-keeping, ordering prescriptions, etc., are often haphazard at best. Case in point: I was originally served by a physician about three miles from our home. But calls to his office routed to a call center in, I believe, the Bahamas. Messages were not passed on, or passed on in garbled form. Calls were not returned. The pharmacy we use had similar problems trying to contact the physician. It was a mess. He may have been the most skilled doctor in Florida, but the incompetence of his support staff made health care from that particular organization more or less a crapshoot.

Another thing to be aware of is that a lot of the providers here in TV are one- or two-physician clinics, sometimes with CNP assistance, with only basic services provided onsite. Lab work may mean driving several miles to a lab. X-rays, same thing. Specialist services require yet another referral and a drive. Many of us come from situations where everything is provided on-site: for instance the town where I lived, 25,000 people, had a state-of-the-art medical complex that included a full-service hospital with two clinics attached. Everything was done on-site; an annual physical usually meant an initial examination by your doctor, who then sent you down the hall for labs, maybe x-rays, whatever. About an hour later you had your final visit with your doctor, who had the results of all the tests done, discussed them with you, made any changes necessary to prescriptions and transmitted the prescriptions to your pharmacy before the end of your visit. There may be exceptions but in my experience things are not done that way here.

The doctor three miles from you was, where?
BTW your second paragraph , about the town you came from, are the services I get from The Villages Health. So, yes things are done that way here.

OP, if you are over 65, contact SHINE, SHINE - Home, or 1-800-96-ELDER (1-800-963-5337) to get unbiased info on health care options for those 65 or older. We were grandfathered in the Villages Health System, until they decided to completely stop allowing Medicare and Supplemental participants. We tried an advantage plan, it did not work well for use, we left and were able to get back to original Medicare. Your supplemental provider should be able to provide a list of doctors in the local area.

That is why, thankfully, Gainesville is not too far away where one can find excellent medical care.

So wait, a region with over 100,000 Medicare patients (most of whom have a solid secondary insurance) doesn’t have good health care.
It seems like a license to print money for a physician’s group.

Seems like an orthopedic would be bust beyond belief.

Yes you would find care around the villages. Outside of the villages healthcare system. There are plenty of non villages Practices as well.

Medicare Advantage plans and regular Medicare are on the lower end of payments to physicians. Younger patients who are employed and have health insurance reimburse doctors at higher rates than Medicare does. I remember when I worked in the biotech industry I was sometimes involved in discussions with physician offices about reimbursement for our oncology products. The physicians and practice managers kept track of the percentage of Medicare patients in their practices. The higher the Medicare percentage got the lower their reimbursement rate became. They obviously preferred private insurance and younger patients. So bottom line, an area like the Villages, with mostly Medicare patients, is not attractive to physicians or hospitals. That is why we don’t attract a large number of physicians to this area. Low reimbursement from Medicare equals low interest from doctors to locate here.

Been in TV 6 years and the healthcare has been outstanding,

The above statement is incorrect and he should have done a better job to research his claim prior to posting.

Practitioner here in the villages
 

I have been a nurse practitioner for over 25 years and have practiced in too many states to mention. :)
I moved here because my folks are here part of the year ! The sad reality is the number of patients per doctor ratio is limited. The Volume load is unrealistic and the Emergency situation personally scares me. I LOVE the Villages, my neighbors the best ever. The patients my favorite ever ! Sadly however I feel the care is great if you have a Medicare plan that you can go anywhere Without. A referral. If you are healthy you can’t compare your situation to others. Be thankful you are blessed. Many patients are unaware of the lacking skills of routine practitioners. I would rather work in an A environment rather than s subpar one. I wish I could not write this but be judgmental of your care. Research guidelines. You can trust that all the providers are 1. Board certified
2. Penalised for referrals
3 seeing way too many patients a day
Im not even talking about one practice in particular. These are my personal views on my experiences as an experienced practitioner
With that said I continue to support life here it is paradise. Please just don’t be blind. What the author said is often correct here
I am a patient advocate , I love this community. I hope one day the services improve for health care ! Sometimes Gainesville doesn’t help if you need an ER.

How Much More Than Medicare Do Private Insurers Pay? A Review of the Literature | KFF

Key Findings

Private insurers paid nearly double Medicare rates for all hospital services (199% of Medicare rates, on average), ranging from 141% to 259% of Medicare rates across the reviewed studies.

The difference between private and Medicare rates was greater for outpatient than inpatient hospital services, which averaged 264% and 189% of Medicare rates overall, respectively.

For physician services, private insurance paid 143% of Medicare rates, on average, ranging from 118% to 179% of Medicare rates across studies.

And if you have cancer your oncologist will not cure you. All they do is destroy your immune system. Learn how to be your own doctor.Understand what is poisoning you first and formost. When we go back to the original healing system we will be much healthier. Remember 70 years ago. Very few doctors, hospitals, cvs, walgreens, cancer centers, etc..Our food and water system is slowly killing us.

Another silly post. Villages takes my insurance and we have other great providers. Also, mother in law lives here and has Medicare and she also has great providers.

OP is same person that posted about HOA fees.

Your post is incorrect. I do not have United Healthcare Advantage, I have Medicare and UHC and most of my specialists, cardiologist, rheumatologist, gynecologist are with The Villages Health.

You do not have to go outside TV. We have Medicare with a supplemental plan and are very happy with our doctors....all within TV!

Yes! I have the same insurance you mentioned and have multiple physicians in The Villages Health.

Go to Ocala family health they have everything under one roof
It’s only s 25 minutes from the villages They are honest and have there prices posted

That’s what I’ve always thought. Doesn’t make sense.

The Villages Health has the best doctors!

I was unable to use The Villages Healthcare System (except for the medical imaging, which is fine) because my retirement package requires me to use Blue Cross as my backup or pay a lot more. My first interest was to choose doctors who are affiliated with a hospital with an A rating. The Villages hospital and all the Ocala hospitals have B ratings. Not good enough. Often this is due to higher rates for hospital-acquired infections. (Sort of like finding roaches in a restaurant kitchen, right?) The closest A-rated hospital is AdventHealth/Waterman. It is excellent, but it’s 45 minutes away from my house. So it goes. That’s no farther than Ocala. I then went on their website, where I found a list of affiliated doctors. Many were not accepting new patients, but some were. For my “family doctor,” I found a Peruvian med school graduate who is board certified in Internal Medicine, Dr. César Unyon. I’m very pleased with his work. If I need a specialist, he gets me an appointment with a doctor who uses AdventHealth/Waterman, including with doctors not accepting new patients. If I were to need even more advanced care, AdventHealth/Waterman is allied with AdventHealth/Orlando, the top-rated hospital in Florida. Waterman is new, quiet, semi-rural, with good parking, right off 441, and friendly. I had major surgery there, and I was very impressed.

One thing about doctors around here: a LOT of them are from a wide variety of minorities. If that’s a problem for you, you would do well to not move to this area.

OP doesn’t live here, and never has. Not sure what his agenda is? Both of his posts yesterday (there’s one about HOA fees) aren’t even his own words, they’re just copied from another source as someone pointed out in the HOA thread.

To the OP, you have opined on several subjects concerning The State of The Villages from your Long Island base which I gather is where you live: HOAs (which we don't have), lack of public transportation, healthcare. Just curious, have you ever visited The Villages?

I respect your years of experience and some of those comments are right on the mark.
But also consider that The Villages Health System books 1/2 hour appointment for revisits and 1 hour for new patients. Each physician is limited to a panel of 1200 patients, are not "penalized for referrals, and hardly are time pressed. The drawback is that they only accept UHC and Florida Blue advantage plans.

Those statements are just inane. Not just some of them, pretty much all of them. Know any cancer survivors? Guess not. Aware that even in stage 4 Hodgkin's Disease has a 98+% CURE rate? Guess not. Aware that very few types of cancer are related to food or water??? Guess not. Be your own doctor???? Let us know how that works out for you:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

I strongly suspect that God forbid anyone with that attitude gets any type of neoplasm, they'll be on the doorstep of an oncologist faster than a jackrabbit

Agree totally

Yes, he is a perennial troll that doesn't even live here

Shouldn't be a problem for anyone, as long as they are qualified.

Totally agree. Extremely frustrating

Who?

yup agree !!!