Posted 5/22/2011 6:50 PM (GMT 0)
I live in Tidewater, or Hampton Roads Virginia, between Yorktown, Jamestown, and Williamsburg to my north and Va Beach and Norfolk to my south. I go to Richmond to VCU Medical Center, it takes me about 45 minutes when no traffic and about an hour and fifteen minutes when there is traffic... you know those 'virginia road blocks', oops, I mean Virginia rubber neckers. LOL.
Well anyways, I wouldnt imagine Richmond would be THAT extremely far from you but now that I think about it it might be about the same distance. Although I see a doctor and his name is 'Dr. Kuemmerle' and he is the head of the 'IBD Clinic' which is part of the 'Digestive Health Center', Obviously you know IBD Clinic stands for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic. The way its set up is really nice. They have an entire floor right inside of the hospital, on the 4th floor on 'North' Hospital they call it, even though its all the same hospital and all are connected. But on the floor, on the left is the IBD Clinic and on the right is a 45 to 50 bed inpatient section... So anyone getting admitted by your doctor such AS your GI, or through the ER, will be placed here in the inpatient section of the IBD Clinic-Digestive disease center, unless the 45 to 50 beds are full in which case you'd get put on this one floor I forget the name of but you basically stay there until a bed on the unit your supposed to be on opens up which could be a couple hours or a couple days depending on the size of the unit. But it's honestly truely really nice because the clinic and inpatient are on the same floor and thats all thats on that floor so your doctor is always on the floor even when he's seeing patients in his offices. Also not to mention there is an infusion center right there in the Clinic section of the floor where you could get remicade or whatever other infusions you happen to need, I've recieved iron through the infusion center before, and also one I had an appt and felt bad and they were admitted me to the floor, inpatient, for a few days, so instead of make me wait in the exam room they took me across the hall to infusion center and got some fluids started on me immediatly. They only treat Crohns and Ulcerative colitis on this floor which is really nice, so the nurses know exactly what your going through they've seen very mild cases and they've seen very serious cases like me. They also have the chief or head of colon and rectal surgery that has appointments in the IBD clinic on tuesday's and thursdays, so you dont even have to leave the clinic to see a specialist in colon and rectal surgeon, altho I have a local colon and rectal surgeon I do use the one at VCU Medical Center for second opinions commonly and also when I'm addmitted he frequently stops by to check on me. So it's nice because its big enough to have its own admitted floor right on the same floor and that happens to be for only crohns and colitis, but small enough to where they only have I think it's 3 doctors who are actually in the ibd clinic.
Appointment scheduling is not hard at all. If its like you need to get in very quickly you can call and leave a message directly on the doctors voicemail or the nurse practitioners voicemail and they always, 100% of the time call you back the same day, and they call you themselves, not a nurse or secretary, which would really aggravate me to death to wait hours then talk to a nurse or worse a secretary that knows truely nothing. If it happens to be not so urgent, like when I was released from the hospital about 4 weeks ago, they wanted a follow up, I got released on a monday and by the next tuesday was my appointment...and actually I have to say that they weren't even there on that friday or monday...so really got an appoitment for like 3 or 4 days later.
If you can make it to Richmond I highly recommend seeing one of their doctors, especially Doctor Kuemmerle or Doctor Bickston I believe is how you spell his name, the surgeons name is doctor ackbarri I think is how you spell it or something similiar.
If you dont want to go to Richmond, check out Virginia Tech's website...They are starting a medical school literally inside of roanoke virginia, its in partnership with a company i believe is called corrilion clinic or something like that...I dont know if it's quite up and running yet, but you should sure look into it, Virginia Tech provides the science and technology and things such as that and corrilion or whatever is providing the first 'round of doctors' until VT can actually start graduating doctors under its namesake.
Either is a great option, and I'd tend to stick with a medical university school, they will always be the most up to date medical knowledge, you might tend to wait longer for appointments but you'll always get the best care at the same time, also dont forget what they learn from you is going to help the next person and others around the country.
If I were you and can make the trip to richmond then I'd check them out first, until the virginia tech partnership has been up and running smoothly for a year or two, to get all of the logistics and kinks worked out, but thats just me.
By the way, UVa is a really great medical school, your lucky you got to see a doctor there.