Medical care

To our continuing discussion about the quality and availability of regional health care, let me add the perspective of a patient whose health has become increasingly complicated with age as the availability of timely medical care seems to be decreasing in inverse proportion to my need.

On the brink of alliance between Eastern Virginia Medical School, Old Dominion University and Sentara Health, my experience in a world class medical community has become a constant negotiation. Timely new specialist appointments have not been possible, and long-standing appointments have been peremptorily delayed.

My last provider-canceled appointment resulted in three days of sitting on hold, not receiving promised optional callbacks and occasionally talking with real people who could make no headway. I was finally able to negotiate a five-month delayed appointment with my most important specialist down to three and a half months. Lots of whining and moaning got the job done.

More seriously, a friend recently died after not being able to get response to his symptoms except at the emergency level. I suspect he knew, as I know, that an attempt to deal with a problem in a timely, non-emergency room way is not possible here. The upcoming merger of the three great regional institutions and their very good people will synergize us into the new and rapidly developing frontiers of medicine. Good for us.

But, more important, they also need to expand and synergize downward to where we individuals are trying to deal with a medical environment that seems to be increasingly dysfunctional, if not broken.