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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

Hard to know what is pandemic disruption, and what is genuine OM deterioration.

I’d just note that the deterioration was happening to a noticeable extent, at least in NYC, pre pandemic. Quality might have better in SF and other places, I’m not sure. The top Drs remain very hard to see and booked for weeks if not a month now.

SF area has declined too; long response times, high dr churn. This whole discussion has validated what I’d been noticing!

Odd, that's not been my experience in SF. I've only had one primary physician leave on me in 2018 (I'd been with him for 2 years, but only had visited once). My primary doc responds to messages within a day or two. Responses from the general care team are usually same-day. My primary physician is usually booked out a couple months, which is a bummer, but I can get next-day appointments with a PA or NP, and usually 2-3 days with an MD.

On top of that, it's been mostly easy to get prompt COVID testing when I've needed it, and for a while they even had 8-hour PCR test results.

For the most part I'm still very happy with the service, though this news about the Amazon acquisition is definitely making me question whether or not I will renew next year.

i mean i dont want to overstate it, its still a far better experience than dealing with the regular medical primary care system. Just, in the last ~12 mo or so id had enough problems - multiple MDs id seen before gone, 4+ days to get a message back from general/admin, billing problems(they coded a normal visit wrong and it cost me $600), lost referrals. Compared to basically zero in the ~5 years before. Still a good service that ill keep, just not as great :)

It was enough that i was wondering if they were financially struggling (having seen a lot of startups go through this cycle of at-first-excellent then degrading service). And i guess they were.

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