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Ask HN: What's healthcare like in Silicon Valley?
Here's an odd question. What's healthcare like in Silicon Valley?
I don't live there and from what I tend to find is doctors and healthcare personnel around my area's don't like inquisitive people like me. Every time I ask them a question about my condition and so forth, they try to find whatever they can to escape hoping I'll just follow instructions blindly and get better.
Now in an area filled to the brim of inquisitive people, what's the healthcare there like? Do the doctors enjoy spending the time necessary to answer the questions? Are the hospitals filled with technologies that everyone is curious about using? How is it like over there?
- pasbesoin 15y agoI don't know about the Valley, per se, but my cousin in the greater East Bay area absolutely hates Kaiser after several major SNAFU's in her personal life. Among the worst: A Kaiser physician misdiagnosed her friend's cancer for two years, and also refused to refer for a second opinion when symptoms persisted and worsened. That friend subsequently died. I mention this because, as I understand it, Kaiser is a big force in California -- that would include in the Valley. And at times they seem to receive significant positive press for what is touted as their program of... "cooperative" patient management combined with "effective" cost controls. Anecdotal, but from my cousin as well as other people in my own life, I've heard rather a different story. P.S. I guess I can mention that my cousin is a rather successful and well-connected health care practitioner, herself. So she's approached and dealt with this from something other than a clueless perspective. (I don't know about her friend, though.)
- devs1010 15y agoSome people love Kaiser, others hate it, it seems you never find someone in the middle. I've never been a member of theirs myself so don't know first-hand.
- devs1010 15y agoI'm from the north bay area, its a bit more sparsely populated than the south bay but have been around the whole bay area a lot. Actually, also my dad is a doctor so have had probably have had more exposure to medical people than the average person. I've found most doctors I came into contact with willing to answer questions, etc but doctors still always seem a bit rushed and want to move on to the next patient. However, for the most part they didn't seem to get annoyed with asking complex questions or me showing assertiveness, they just had the general attitude of "not wanting to spend too much time on a patient". I haven't had any major health issues, however, so these weren't necessarily serious life or death issues either, which may have contributed to some of the brevity
- uncleremus 15y agoI've found doctors in the Sunnyvale/Mountain View to be very receptive to my geek questions. I can think of 3 positive examples and no negative examples. I once asked a doctor if he would get my Strep Throat test results in "real time?" He asked me what other time was there and we spent a lot of time talking about batch jobs, real time processing, etc. I recommend PAMF.