My suggestion is that if you're within a 2-3 hour drive of major cancer centers - just use the US News list https://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/rankings/cancer - go there instead of your local community hospital. The top cancer hospitals in the world accept your health insurance (probably), so why not go there? Use your vacations days, book hotels if you have to - this is the time to go all out.

My experience: I was horribly sick for 10 months, none of my local doctors could figure it out, then I drove to Penn Medicine in Philadelphia and they did the right labwork in the first visit. These top centers just have different mindset than your community hospitals.

This.

The specific term is called "NCI Designated Cancer Center". If you can go there, do it.

this goes for everything not just cancer, orthopedic surgery, cardiology, neurology, etc.

Just take the mindset of - if this gets screwed up, where do i get sent to deal with the screw up, and just go there first.

the crazy thing is, as mentioned above, they probably take your insurance and your not going to end up paying more to be at a top notch facility.

Really good advice! There are so many benefits of the big centers, the largest one being speed. At MD Anderson I got a question answered within 20 minutes of my visit to a Dr that happened by him calling the pathologist. If that wasn't at a cancer center, it would have take days, or more likely, the question never would have been answered at all.

I no longer go to my local community hospital for any purpose. It’s either an inconsequential thing that my primary care doctor can deal with, or go to a large reputable hospital even if it’s a one-hour drive away.