Can you help us find elder health care in Laurel, Maryland?

February 28, 2021 11:56 AM

It looks like it's time for a new doctor for our ninety-year-old relative. How can we find a good one? We haven't been able to find a gerontologist in the area by web searching. They need to be located in or near Laurel, Maryland, or in Howard County. She has good private health insurance and savings. Maybe we should be open to concierge care, although we hate the unfairness of the whole idea.

Her primary care doctor retired last year, so she's under the care of another doctor in the same clinic, but it's not very good care. The practice has been bought by a hospital that appears to value speed over quality. The doctor wants to see her online, but at ninety years old she can't manage that sort of thing anymore. When she went to see the doctor in person for a checkup a month or two ago, the visit was allotted such a short period of time that it didn't seem like the doctor even heard her. I think it wasn't even a doctor who saw her, but a nurse practitioner.

In the last few weeks she's been having serious new trouble with muscle soreness and weakness, and has been unable to do much of her usual daily exercise routine. We want her to see the doctor, but she saw her only a few weeks ago and says that didn't do much good. Maybe a new doctor would help?

posted by chromium to Health & Fitness (4 answers total)

I have never sprung for one of those concierge practices for myself because I share your reservations, but I wouldn’t hesitate for a ninety year old relative. There are a lot of out of pocket expenses related to eldercare and anything you can afford to throw money at to make life easier is worth it.
posted by cakelite at 1:00 PM on February 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

If she can pay for concierge care, then do it. It not "unfair" to do so. Denying care altogether is unfair. Medicare has removed that concern. If she can do better than Medicare, why should she decline?
posted by yclipse at 4:18 PM on February 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Also, if there is any way to reach her retired doctor to see if there is someone else they recommend? Someone they have mentored or been impressed by? Sometimes it’s less of a guessing game if you provide a list of practitioners that take her insurance.

I’ve also looked up board certified internists that have a certificate in geriatrics and then combed through posted information to find prospects.
posted by childofTethys at 7:10 PM on February 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

I wish I knew. My parents are not too far away in Anne Arundel County. They like their doctor. But I listen to their accounts of going to the doctor, and I note the health-related red flags that pop up when they talk to me, and I've gone with them to appointments about certain things (though I can't do so all the time because I live a couple of hours away), and I'm just at my wit's end about why physicians are so complacent about elder health issues.

DO YOU EVEN KNOW ANY OLD PEOPLE? Like, you're gonna have to ask my 85 year old mom more than once and more specifically about her digestion issues to get any truth outta her because it's embarrassing. You need to look at the difference between how my parents actually move and how well they say they can get around. Surely you can see the physical and verbal evidence of my father's utterly out-of-control anxiety?
posted by desuetude at 12:50 AM on March 1, 2021