#geisinger

There’s a reddit thread in R/Pennsylvania about healthcare in rural south central PA region, and it’s not a pretty picture painted.

Reddit comment from R/Pennsylvania, Saturday, December 21, 2024, FaithlessnessCute204 • 3d ago • not a healthcare story directly but i got to talk to a DCNR ranger that was quitting the other year because a big part of his job had become doing welfare checks on people that moved from harrisburg/allentown/state college up into the mountains and then couldnt cope medically with the 2 hr drives for medical issues. dude found like 4 people dead on his route alone the year i talked to him.

DCNR rangers are law enforcement park rangers who work in Pennsylvania state parks and forests.

It’s not always that great in Scranton Pennsylvania to be honest. My own plan is so limited that though I have Geisinger insurance, not all Geisinger providers and facilities are even covered in my plan. They sent me a letter saying that I was a second class citizen basically, and marked as such - they said my insurance card was color coded to alert healthcare providers of my limited network. I’ve often had to drive 1-½ hours to Danville to see specialists without a 4-6 month wait. At least some specialist appointments can be done via telehealth at a distance. This is why ending telehealth for Medicare sounds like an outrageous situation that’s fortunately been postponed, but will still need to be addressed before the deadline at the end of March 2025. There’s concern that if Medicare stops telehealth, private health insurance companies will follow suit.

My letter to reps:

Telehealth services via Medicare must not expire. Telehealth service should be a permanent option for all patients, and covered by all insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid. Access to in-network healthcare providers isn’t always easy, especially for people living in rural areas.

I felt my interview at Geisinger went well!

There were 18 interviewees, everyone was super nice. They don't do stress interviews and it's closed-file, so all the faculty interviewer gets is your PS, experiences, and secondary and all the student interviewer gets is your secondary.

The questions were all pretty standard, luckily I shared a common interest with my faculty member so we had a good conversation there. I did hear from one of the other interviewees though that her faculty member grilled her on her personal statement, but I think she was in the minority.

Letter to the editor is a letter from state lawmakers to the CEO of Geisinger Healthcare System. Maybe they'll have more luck than I did when I wrote asking for reasonable accommodation. They wrote back blathering about how they care about "patient experience" - but don't seem concerned with patient safety.

Regional legislators concerned about health care negotiations - Mar 13, 2024 In addition, the healthcare professionals at the Geisinger Community Medical Center campus are rightfully frustrated that the hospital zeroed out the Extended PTO time (employees’ sick time) for every member of the new bargaining units. Further, the proposal to eliminate all sick time for RNs and nurse anesthetists as well is an unacceptable way to treat these dedicated professionals.

Geisinger Health system now reinstated mask requirements for staff. Probably because a couple weeks ago I heard over 100 providers were out sick at once. That's just providers, no idea how many staff were out sick. Why aren't they requiring masks for patients? Probably because they don't want to provide masks for all the patients. And that has to be because they don't give a crap if they make patients sick, as long as the lucrative activity they can charge for continues.