Medical Care on the Road–The Mayo for us…

Well just as we had planned we used this stay at Pine Lake RV Park for some sit back and relax time… no touring while we were here since we were we were able to score a week’s stay at St Andrews State Park in Panama City, Florida. We had planned to visit that area while we were here but since we will be there for a week we chose to just stay put, relax and use this time to do a bit more planning ahead..

This little park has a small lake adjacent to it that doesn’t require fishing licenses to fish it. I plan to buy a fishing license for our Florida stay but we aren’t anywhere near a town here. We are, as they say, out in the boonies…but it was just fine for walking, fishing and some planning.

So now that we were able to stay one week in Panama City Florida we decided to map out the remaining route over towards our stay in Jacksonville, Florida. We also have booked another week along the emerald coast at Rustic Sands in Mexico Beach, Florida. Then we will likely stay in Carrabelle at Sunset Isle RV And Yacht Club for one last stay on the beach. Finally we will stay a day or two along the remaining route to Jacksonville where we have our physicals and other medical appointments scheduled at the Mayo Clinic there.

With all the talk about the Affordable Health Care Act and heath coverage I will discuss our use of the Mayo a bit more. As I have mentioned before, for full timers finding reputable medical care while on the road is challenging at best. One thing we discovered early on during our last stay in Florida was that there was a Mayo Clinic and Hospital there. We wondered if we would be allowed to seek care there so we made the necessary phone calls to seek the answers.

What we found out is that as long as they accept your medical insurance plan you can be seen at the Mayo. They do require you to have a primary care physician but other than that you can be seen for just about anything. What we do is plan ahead just enough so when we are near a Mayo that we can get all of our annual visits done. We have also been to the Mayo in Mesa, Arizona. Since Sharon is a Cancer Survivor she sees all the necessary doctors while we are there as well.

The way it typically works is we call patient services where we tell the screener what we want to have done at the Mayo… ie physicals, eye exams, dermatologist visits, oncologist visits, and Sharon gets her “female” exams as well. Then the screener will pass our info to appointments where they will make sure the doctors we need to see are available during the time frame we requested. The initial appointment is made and then they send us a detailed listing of all the scheduled visits which are usually spread out over two days.

The best part of their service is everything to do with our annual visits is completed in two days.  Sharon had 5 or 6 different appointments last time and best of all, the results of any lab work or x-rays are available almost immediately.  If there are no issues we are typically only charged one single co-pay for all the visits Upon conclusion of the visits and tests we are given summaries of doctor notes and results to take back to our primary care doctor in Texas.  Wonderful one stop shopping and we always feel taken care of very efficiently with very little wait time as well. Can you tell that we just love the Mayo Clinics….