Medical Care in Milwaukee

My Quora Answer to:
How would you rate medical care in Milwaukee, WI?

Michael Mangold, lives in Milwaukee, WI (2017-present)

It can be very good, but it can also be very bad. I've experienced both.

This has very little to do accessibility, which I rate very high. I believe that there are four factors which contribute to the gap: Medicare/Medicaid; physician competency; the drive to replace docs with Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants; and the hospital systems.They all affect each other, too.

For example, government insurance guarantees accessibility, but also lowers the standards of care. As a consequence of increasing opportunity yet decreasing reimbursements and increasing regulations, the hospital systems operate what I term “Assembly Line Medicine.” Move 'em in, order unnecessary tests, write prescriptions (because as we all know, a patient hasn't been seen if there's no Rx), refer to specialists, then move 'em out. Keep this fact in mind: today's hospital systems are not the same as yesterday's hospitals. I've written about this before.

Because so many docs burn out from ALM, the hospital systems squeeze them out and replace them with NP's and PA's. I have had 4 or 5 of these “providers” in the last year and not one was as good as most of my physicians over the years. But to their credit, not one was as bad as some of my worst. Well, except the PA at an Immediate Care clinic who first thought I was a drug seeker when I broke my left shoulder. He moved my arm around like a rag doll until the x-rays came back showing a fracture.

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