My dad has Medicare advantage insurance and was receiving care at city of Hope in Pasadena. He recently learned that his care here will be ending as Medicare advantage is an hmo and city of Hope will no longer accept this insurance.
Do any of you have any suggestions for a good oncologist in the LA area that specializes in prostate cancer? We have to explore our options....We are saddened by the changes and very scared about future care.... Any help is greatly appreciated 🙏
Thank you all, as always ❤️
Written by
ellie2211
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My favorite MOs in LA are Matthew Rettig at UCLA, and Edwin Posadas at Cedars. I like Tanya Dorf at COH too - too bad they don't cover her. I prefer a teaching hospital like UCLA or Cedars because of the range of other services that may come in handy., Mark Scholz at POS is fine too, although some patients I've worked with find his ego hard to manage.
I like the doctors at prostate Oncology Specialists in marina Del Rey. All 3 are excellent (dr Scholz , Dr Lam , dr Turner). They work together and have over 2700 combined patients which provides them with lots of internal data. They think out of the box but with caution. For example they were using Zytega with adt on hormone sensitive men years before studies showed it reduced deaths by over 40%. They are on top of all the latest treatments. I also go to Dr Drakaki at ucla for second opinions.. She’s awesome too but never goes outside the SOC. I think that’s common with many of the drs affiliated with major teaching hospitals. Both Drakaki and the drs at Prostate Oncology Specialists are kind and listen and in my opinion do not have the common super ego and never make you feel like your questions are stupid.
If you want to live a long time, try to get out the HMO and switch to PPO on the next open enrollment. HMOs only allow you to see 1 group of medical offices, Kaiser for example is an HMO. PPO you pay a little, but can see any doctor in the USA.
You are exactly right abmicro. I switched to the united health care/AARP Medicare advantage complete PPO. You can review the extensive panel of physicians available in the UHS complete PPO. You essentially have unlimited choice but there may be copayment variations.I have not encountered any heavy-handed financial steerage since I joined the plan three years ago.Here in Tampa I do not have any monthly fee in addition to what the Medicare administration pays UHS.
I had the same thing happened to me at a local cancer center. I was on a Medicare advantage plan and they didn’t renew their contract. So last year I switched over to original Medicare plan g , don’t have to worry about that happening again .
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