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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Johnston who wrote (53656)	2/13/2006 3:26:05 AM
From: GraceZ	Respond to of 110194

Marylanders tend to age in place so there is a big need for expansion in healthcare. It's also a relatively wealthy state because it is mostly middle class with only one major city with a large population of poor people. You can make 3x the poverty level and still qualify for Medicaid here. Central Maryland is one big suburb from end to end if you exclude Baltimore. But most of all you can attribute the great health facilities to having Johns Hopkins here. Johns Hopkins Hospital/University is a world class institution and because they have been here for so long and have such a good reputation it has rubbed off on the other teaching hospitals in the area, like University of Maryland Hospital. It is amazing what a few really top notch teaching facilities can do to the whole environment. Within a reasonable radius, I can have my pick of about eight different hospitals which have excellent specialty units, as well as the doctors groups which have spun off from these different units. One place might have the best sports medicine or hand center, eye clinic, another has the best trauma unit, another is well known for oncology, another for orthopedic surgery , another for pediatric intensive care and high risk pregnancy or then there is Hopkins which can compete with the best in all these fields. They compete like crazy with each other for patients. I've spent a lot of time in the various hospitals all over the country since 1979 onward not because I get sick a lot, but because they are my clients. Plus, I have a number of family members who have worked at them or have gone through extensive treatment. My husband has also built a large number of these new units. He brings home in progress pics sometimes and I'm blown away by how much something like emergency medicine has progressed from back in the late 70s and early 80s, when I worked as a photo assistant to a photographer who shot in a lot of hospitals. We used to have to hang out in the ER waiting for something interesting to shoot and back then they were truly dismal places. Not like they are now. The ERs around here look more like hotels than what you think of as hospitals. I always laugh watching the TV show ER because the ER there looks like the ERs I used to work in 25 years ago. Diagnostic tools are so far advanced, so much more portable and fast considering where they were back in the 70s and 80s. Another place things have really progressed is in the operating room. Surgery is nothing like it used to be with all the new fiber optics, cameras and keyhole types of instruments.