There is a good chance my local medical clinic will be closing because the people who run the place are patients, not business leaders or medical professionals.
Part of the way the clinic gets funded is to have a board made primarily of patients from the community. Over the past several years, the board has hired poorly and fired no one because people quit from the frustration of bad management by the board. I found this out through an article in our community rag. The 'physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician's assistants' penned the letter in the opinions as an apology for 'hundreds' of appointments that have recently been cancelled and laid out why.
When I first went to the clinic a decade ago, I would get callbacks from my doctor to see how things were going, and I could get an appointment the same day. Now, I wait 7 weeks for an appointment with a [person] that gets cancelled two days before with an offer of another opening in 3 weeks. I don't get referrals I need to see specialists after 8 weeks. I will never see the same [person] twice. Their patient portal is 75% useless, including most messages that I have sent were never answered. I've walked out of appointments because the [person] who was supposed to see me didn't show up after 30 minutes.
I switched my healthcare over from the VA to this clinic because the VA had their own issues and the main hospital is an hour away by car. I can see the front door of my clinic from my front door. In my experience with VA doctors, they think their patients are full of shit and looking for pain meds. The [people] at the clinic are friendly enough and seem to care.
Friends have said big changes have been made and I should give the VA another shot. Goddamn that is a large-size pain in the ass.
Goddamnitall!