Medical Professional Shortage
Over the past couple of years, I've noticed that Kaiser seems to be having a medical practitioner shortage in my area. I've been moved to multiple primary care physicians in the past 5 years and it can take more than 6 weeks to get seen (so my urgent care visits have increased) and there's no primary care physicians in our area currently accepting new patients. Now, I get a letter saying that my kids' pediatrician is no longer available.
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Medical Professional Shortage
@kiesa yeah we’ve been in varying levels of doctor shortage for a while now, and across multiple insurance networks so i dont know that switching would help. i think the pandemic (and subsequent deaths/disabilities/burnout among practitioners) really escalated this nationwide, but we were already starting to see issues around here even before that
after my GP moved out of network i ended up using a teaching clinic as my GP for a few years bc no literally one who was both in network and on a bus route was accepting new patients (fortunately said GP moved to a new practice that was in network recently and i was able to get back on her patient list before it filled up)
Medical Professional Shortage
@kiesa i hope you get lucky and it doesn’t end up being too far of a drive!
its frustrating bc there are so many aspects of the system that don’t have to be like this and yet we seem to just keep leaning in to all the stuff causing problems
Medical Professional Shortage
@Satsuma Yeah, I was thinking about switching Kaiser last year and basically decided it probably wasn't better outside their network. I'm trying to resign myself to driving over the mountains but I'm still cranky about it.
(And yes, i know people who retired earlier than they initially planned because of the pandemic.)