Local health care
Would anyone care to contribute any good, bad or indifferent experiences with local health care providers? In 3+ years my doctor visits have fortunately been limited to a semi-emergency requiring a tetanus shot after being pierced by a rusty nail, and a routine physical. I endured a long wait and lengthy paperwork for the shot, which took all of 3 minutes to administer once I got to see the doctor. The physical was fine but I had to wade through a pod of apathetic nurses, none of whom inspired confidence in their ability to care for me or anyone for that matter (my wife witnessed one obviously sick patient vomit in a lobby trash bin, only to be upbraided by the staff — “You didn’t just throw up in my garbage?”)
Can anyone recommend a good general practitioner with a reliable staff? Short of that, can anyone recommend a place to get a vasectomy — cheap? I keed, I keed.
I’ve gone exclusively to one of the many “doc in a boxes” (Our neighor calls them that, and she’s a doctor!) along College Road and just stopped, have taken up instead with the New Hanover Medical Group on 16th, where I meet with an avuncular, doctor-like Dr. Almond and his PAs. Been once, actually — So far so good.
I didn’t have bad experiences at the clinic (Is that what they’re called — the bannered, small commercial, emergency and drop-in whatevers that are so numerous around here?) — in fact I thought the care was pretty good there, and went for three years or so — though like you Ranald, I didn’t ever have any pressing needs. I guess I switched because I wanted to feel like I had an actual medical institution looking after me — long white coats, proximity to the actual hospital, some additional semblance of authority, formality, I guess. But one may pay a price for these impressions: On my first visit, last week, I had to wait 45 minutes or so past my appointed time, and there was a very old lady in the waiting room who had been waiting for two hours (sic!). She remained charming and civil even when she told an assistant that she felt she’d “grown to this chair”, but the wait was wearing on her and on many others there. Do you have to wait this long if you go to a “real” doctor, as I’ve begun to? Also, compared to the doc-in-a-box, this waiting room at least was worn and dim, smelled unusual in the usual way.
I think that doctors rely heavily now on physicians assistants to render the kind of beyond-three-minutes attention upon patients that doctors were known for — indeed, the little room where I waited a second time was full of recent, defensive proclamations about this doctor not going to the hospital anymore, using PAs for all kinds of things, et cetera.
Health care in general has (of course) changed so utterly that it’s hard even to know what you’re looking for, or what you’re entitled to.