Is Ann Arbor experiencing a shortage of physicians?

[netmouse]

So, I am slowly getting around to picking a primary care physician for my HMO. I'm looking for a new place partly because it seems to be getting harder and harder to get in to see my regular doctor at the old place... I tend to get shunted, on the phone or in person, to a nurse practitioner. Now, maybe nurse practitioners are just as experienced and trained as doctors and I'm thinking about this wrong, but I miss when I got to see my doctor more easily when I was sick, a few years ago.

So I called a new office yesterday which my chiropractor directed me to, and the doctors they had there who were accepting new patients were scheduling into either April or July for appointments for new patients. July! But I could get in earlier if my health insurance would let me see a nurse practitioner instead...

Is the health care industry restructuring, or what?

Comments

[elizilla]

I think the nurse practitioners are just as good, for any illness that wouldn't send me to a specialist anyway. Maybe they only have 80 or 90 percent of the knowledge a doctor has, but you get the full benefit of that knowledge brought to bear, because they actually have time to actually *look* at you before they rush out the door. It's easier to get them to focus on you.

Doctors mainly just rush in, look at your charts and confirm the diagnosis done by the other people in the office who saw you first. Then they rush out before you have time to even ask them anything.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Well, the last time I went I waited over an hour to see the nurse practitioner-- and I had an appointment. they really do seem to be either short-staffed or over-scheduling.