Posted on 09/01/2014 9:37:59 PM PDT by steve86
In the shrub steppe of Grand Coulee on the banks of the Columbia River, the town’s two family doctors practice at an unrelenting pace, working on call every other night and every other weekend.
In the coastal town of Port Angeles, the doctor shortage is so acute that a clinic is turning away 250 callers a week seeking a physician.
George and Lynne Rudesill are two of those people. Since learning earlier this summer that their primary-care doctor in Sequim was retiring, the couple have scrambled to find a replacement. Their calls are being met with waiting lists hundreds of people long or advice to call again in a month.
“I’m going to have to drive all the way to Silverdale or Bremerton to see a doctor,” George Rudesill said, citing cities that are about 70 or more miles away from home. “This area is in a medical crisis right now.”
Rural areas have long been strapped for doctors, but now the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is further straining those limited resources. More people with insurance means more people will want to connect with a doctor — just as aging baby boomers require more care and the doctors are retiring.
...
While Seattle and its suburbs have more than 11 primary-care physicians per 10,000 residents and so far are keeping pace with growing demand, in the northern swath of the Olympic Peninsula that number shrinks to fewer than eight, according to 2011 data. An area covering Grand Coulee’s Grant County as well as Chelan, Okanogan and Douglas counties has just over six — more than 1,500 potential patients per doctor.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
PING!
Just wait till everything is nationalized.
A friend of mine lived in Nelson, a small town in eastern BC. They had a small hospital which served everyone for about 50 miles distant. National Healthcare decided to close that hospital and turn it into a part-time clinic. All those residents who had emergencies had to go over the mountains (impossible in winter) or into the US.
They eventually decided to re-open the hospital.
That’s good. I visited a couple ski resorts in the Kamloops-Kelowna-Nelson area about 25 years ago.
I lived in Lewistown MT for several years. I had to apply for a doctor when I got there in 2002. No one was accepting new patients 12 years ago! Imagine Obamacare on top of that already real crisis. When I left 3 years ago they were importing Muslim doctors to rural Montana.
I had a Muslim PA and she was actually very good. She quit. I’ve always wondered if her husband made her quit.
For many years now, new Physicians who choose to practice in rural areas (at least here in Iowa) for a certain amount of time can have part/all of their loans paid. A friend of ours did that, although her “rural” area is about 30 minutes from a major Metro area...so she’s content. I notice the article mentions this type of program.
What it doesn’t mention however is another major issue in rural areas. The small county hospitals are staffed with Family Practice physicans (on-call only at night). Some deliver babies, some don’t. But they don’t handle any type of trauma, heart issue, emergency surgery, etc. They all have chopper pads outside and they call the larger hospitals 2-3 hours away (by ambulance) for even marginal situations.
When family members have been in these hospitals, I observed those flights coming in 5-6 times/day at times...at ONE small County facility. This did not used to occur, and I have no idea how it became standard practice.
Add up the costs of those flights going in and out of 1000’s of rural hospitals...and add it to the pile of reasons that the cost of med care is increasing at such an alarming rate.
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