Comment by exhilaration
4 days ago
My suggestion is that if you're within a 2-3 hour drive of major cancer centers - just use the US News list https://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/rankings/cancer - go there instead of your local community hospital. The top cancer hospitals in the world accept your health insurance (probably), so why not go there? Use your vacations days, book hotels if you have to - this is the time to go all out.
My experience: I was horribly sick for 10 months, none of my local doctors could figure it out, then I drove to Penn Medicine in Philadelphia and they did the right labwork in the first visit. These top centers just have different mindset than your community hospitals.
This.
The specific term is called "NCI Designated Cancer Center". If you can go there, do it.
One of them listed in my state is at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, they do research on Cancer and aren't a medical facility so I don't know if all of those centers act as places people should go.
this goes for everything not just cancer, orthopedic surgery, cardiology, neurology, etc.
Just take the mindset of - if this gets screwed up, where do i get sent to deal with the screw up, and just go there first.
the crazy thing is, as mentioned above, they probably take your insurance and your not going to end up paying more to be at a top notch facility.
Haven't had cancer, but for another surgery I had, the drive down from SF to Stanford Sports Medicine was EXTREMELY worth it.
Sadly the teaching hospital near me is both not especially competent and essentially the only teaching hospital in the state, plus even more bureaucratic about access than the other hospitals
Once you're at that point, just go to the top of the list for whatever specialty and fly out of state, or even to a different country. US healthcare is so absurdly expensive that flights and hotels kinda have to be cheaper than the care no matter how crazy you go.
The problem with that is wait time. Sure if you can get into Penn, or a similarly extremely well known place, they are generally great, but can you get seen in time? They are _extremely_ backlogged for "normal" people. If you know someone or are a VIP, you can perhaps jump the line.
Had to make this calculus myself - was diagnosed with stage 0 melanoma, penn never returned my (multiple) phone calls. So I went with the local Moh's surgeon who removed it 3 weeks after diagnosis. Did I make the right call? I guess I'll find out in a few years
I no longer go to my local community hospital for any purpose. It’s either an inconsequential thing that my primary care doctor can deal with, or go to a large reputable hospital even if it’s a one-hour drive away.
They are still probably better for emergency care
Six hour round trip for us. Worth it.
Really good advice! There are so many benefits of the big centers, the largest one being speed. At MD Anderson I got a question answered within 20 minutes of my visit to a Dr that happened by him calling the pathologist. If that wasn't at a cancer center, it would have take days, or more likely, the question never would have been answered at all.
But you experience is not "Things to know when you get cancer"
I agree with you in spirit but once you know you diagnosis most cancer treatment isnt actually that complicated because we dont actually know how to treat cancer.