02-16-2022, 03:18 AM
(02-15-2022, 03:33 AM)kalianna Wrote: I got excited about big island family medicine but their specialties are tatoo and hair removal so now Iʻm a bit skeptical. And they donʻt list what insurance they will accept, which is a bit unusual.
Unless we're looking at different web sites, I don't see that they list either one as their "specialties", just that they offer it. Dan Driscoll in Hilo is one of the best eye surgeons in the world and he offers similar cosmetic treatments in his eye clinic. Hilo medical center is unlikely to offer any procedure that insurance isn't going to reimburse, so private clinics offer them. Because they are businesses.
One of the things I like about Ledford is that he spent most of his career as an ER doctor on the frontier. I used to live there. He's seen some sh!t. When his wife was removing some stitches she remarked that they met in medical school and both took plastic surgery electives even though they weren't required for graduation (because neither one was going to be a plastic surgeon) because they both thought it was necessary to know how to sew somebody up without butchering them. I believe she was telling me this story because the ER doc at HMC clearly did a butcher job sewing me up. Honestly I don't fault him, because after waiting 6 hours and getting ready to leave, he probably did the best job he could in-between trying to put out bigger fires.
As far as what insurance they accept, all I know is that they accept HMSA, which is pretty much everybody in the entire state that isn't Kaiser. I also know that if you fill out their online form requesting an appointment, you will probably never hear back from them. They are far from perfect, like every other clinic I've been to.