[bluGill]

A few years ago my mom looked at her smart watch (fitbit in her case) and it said she did 4 hours of aerobic exercise that day and her heart was elevated. She worked a retail job, so while on her feet all day, it was not aerobic. She immediately went to the doctor despite no other symptoms and they found cancer (which was then treated and so she is alive today). It isn't clear how much longer it would have been before that cancer was detected, but it would have been longer and so treatment would have been delayed which is generally bad.

[parpfish]

Is this in the US? Because i can’t fathom just being able to casually drop in to visit a doctor like this. Any time I need to talk to a doctor, I have phone tag with their understaffed receptionist for a few days, then we set up an appointment 4-6 months in the future.

[bluGill]

US. There are walk in clinics all over that take people first come first serve (once in a while the receptionist says no way and sends you to an ER where they take people in priority order). Generally they are open 9am-8pm 7 days a week, though it varies by location. These are called urgent care and for are things that you need urgent but non-emergency care for - you typically get an antibiotic or some such treatment (depending on what you have) and are sent home. Depending on what you have sometimes you are told to make an appointment with your regular doctor, sometimes sent to a hospital.

My regular doctor I do need to make an appointment to see. Typically I can get an appointment in about a week anytime I call, though normally I just make the next appointment as I leave the last one and so they are months out.

[parpfish]

Wait… you’re saying she went to urgent care and that urgent care did a cancer screening?

Urgent care is great, but they usually don’t have MDs. There are nurses that can give you stitches or a course of antibiotics but a cancer diagnosis is way out of their expertise

[jhatax]

Every provider / system is different. My wife is a physician who works urgent care shifts over the weekend to serve patients as described above. These are in addition to her M-Friday routine. She is part of the Kaiser system. This is systemwide for Kaiser, so my wife’s weekend engagement isn’t a one-off.

[bluGill]

I don't know what happened after arriving. They likely did sometests and then found a hospital to admit her. Then the hospital did more tests.

The important point here is her fitness tool alerted her to something and that startee the chain that eventually found the real problem.

[repeekad]

I don’t think you’re allowed to post anything about the US healthcare system being good sometimes, I thought they banned that a while ago

[RobKohr]

Say what people will about the cost of medicine in the US, if you have money and good health insurance, you can get pretty much any medical need taken care of immediately.

[SpaghettiCthulu]

I'm curious, where do you live where that happens? I've heard similar complaints from fellow Canadians online, but it has never been an issue for me.

[richjdsmith]

It certainly does sound like Canada. I am one of the lucky ones and do have a family doctor and it is still a minimum of 6 weeks for me to book an appointment to see him.

If I am really in trouble, I can go to his clinic as a drop-in (along with dozens of others) and wait, hoping somebody doesn't show for their appointment.

The state of healthcare in Canada is...bad. really bad. Canada's healthcare system is effectively using long wait times as a form of passive rationing, where delays lead to natural attrition of patients. This is a poor solution to address the per-capita physician shortages by decreasing demand rather than increasing access to care.

[parpfish]

USA, and that’s with good insurance and a primary care provider