[Auracle]

If you go to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota you'll see people from all over the world for a reason. It feels like the UN, where everyone has some sort of debilitating disease.

They have a system where you get evaluated by a general practitioner (or someone more relevant), and then they schedule you to see however many specialists you might need to see - all within a day or two.

It's not perfect, and I've found it's still hard to get them to drill deep on anything not life threatening or obviously testable. That said, I very much doubt that system exists anywhere with socialized medicine. You don't need a referral or anything else to go. You just call and make an appointment.

[albrewer]

I recently had to make an emergency visit to a hospital in a major city, with a really weird presentation.

Within 45 minutes of arrival they had figured out what was immediately wrong and had me hooked up to an IV drip of stuff to fix it. An hour later, a specialist for my issue came and talked to me about the problem and had an idea for a root cause. I was held overnight for observation and had several more tests run; by the time I left the next morning I had a root-cause diagnosis and a prescription to fix it.

[AlbertCory]

"IV drip" - that rang a bell. 25 years ago I was admitted to a hospital with severe abdominal pain. They had a surgeon who was preparing me, mentally, for a temporary colostomy. Fortunately, that IV drip fixed me up within half an hour.

Those antibiotics, man. They work.

[blakesterz]

I'll second the Mayo Clinic. I've (unfortunately) spent way too much time there, and it just can't be beat. I wish every hospital/doctor/system worked like this place. I doubt that's even possible, anywhere, but from my experience, it's how medicine should work.