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.