HealthBeat: Americans Who Have Insurance —But Still No Access To Care, Part I

[marmar]

Americans Who Have Insurance —But Still No Access To Care, Part I


A friend who lives in Boston complained, not long ago, about not being able to find a physician. In Boston? “Come on,” I said. “This is like claiming you couldn’t find a liquor store.”

“They’re all oncologists and cardiologists,” he grumbled. “Last week I cut my hand badly enough that it needed stitches. I have good insurance. But I couldn’t get an appointment with my family doctor—or any of my friends’ doctors. I didn’t want to spend hours in the ER. So I wound up going to my sister’s house. She sewed it up at her kitchen table.”

His experience is not as unusual as it sounds. Some 56 million Americans do not have a regular source of care according to the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) -- even though many of them do have insurance. The problem is a shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs) in many parts of the country, particularly, but not exclusively, in poorer communities.

Even Docs Have to Call In Favors

Not long ago, Bob Wachter, Professor and Associate Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) , and author of Wachter’s World warned his readers: “The Long-Awaited Crisis in Primary Care: It’s Heeere.”

Indeed, if you try get an appointment at UCSF’s general medicine practice, you will find that it is “closed” –even if you are an UCSF physician. They just aren’t taking any new patients. “Turns out we’re not alone,” Wachter adds. “Mass General also is not accepting any new primary care patients.”

http://www.healthbeatblog.org/2008/09/americans-who-h.html

[zanne]

1. Wow. I've been hearing alot about the upcoming shortage of these doctors...

Thankfully, we still have plenty of them around here. I was lucky enough to find a really good one two years ago.

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

2. I have had the same experience

All of the doctors my Aetna planned approved of "were not taking new patients at this time". I ended up having to go way way out of my area to see a covered doctor. This was around 1996.

[Oregone]

3. I think this is typical in cities, anywherre.

I now have Universal Health Care here, and can choose any doctor I want if I can find some accepting new patients. Im in a city full of old retired people sucking up resources, and the demand exceeds the supply.

Fortunately there are a ton of walk-in clinics here that you can get pretty much immediate care at (without appointments), but it would be nice to find a perm doctor.

While in the States, no matter where we were, we couldn't get into doctors at all (even our own was a 1 week wait when our child was very sick). In the States, when your child is sick, their ultimate solution seemed to be, "We can't see them--take them to the ER".