Where Are the Doctors?
To the editor:
In light of your front-page story on Oct. 31 about the restoration of nurse midwife services at Outer Cape Health Services, I’d like to suggest another topic related to access to health care.
We recently became year-round residents and wished to sign up with OCHS. On Oct. 7 I hand-delivered two completed sets of forms to the Wellfleet office so that my wife and I could each be assigned a primary care physician (PCP) and then be able to make future appointments. I was told at the OCHS desk that the forms, which included requests for the transfer of medical records from our former PCPs, were fully completed. The person who reviewed the forms also recommended that we call the offices of our former PCPs to request that the records be expedited to OCHS.
On Oct. 17 we learned that our former PCPs had not yet received the transfer requests. I then called OCHS and was told that it would take a month for OCHS to submit the transfer requests and that we wouldn’t be able to have physicians assigned or make medical appointments until late January or early February — a wait of almost four months.
I was told that the reason for the delay is that many physicians have recently left OCHS and that the few remaining physicians are currently handling about 2,500 patients. Why is this happening and what can be done about it?
Jonathan Sperber
Truro
A Grateful Veteran
To the editor:
I appreciated last week’s article about Timothy Parker Johnson by Amy Whorf McGuiggan [“Veteran of War of 1812 Gets Long Delayed Tribute,” page 13].
I want to point out that her research into Provincetown’s long-forgotten first veterans has not only resulted in the discovery of Johnson’s service as a 15-year-old during the War of 1812, but has in the past also uncovered eight Provincetown veterans of the Revolutionary War.
This kind of research makes for Veterans Day coverage that is different from the usual and all of Provincetown’s veterans and citizens are grateful for it.
Paul C. Mendes, Provincetown
The writer served in Vietnam as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Don’t Put Limits on Art
To the editor:
I followed with interest your article about the question of freedom for artists to show their work outside of galleries [“Licensing Board Urged to Keep Art Everywhere in Provincetown,” Oct. 31, page 6].
How sad, damaging, even, it would be to impose the limits that were proposed by some in Provincetown. I’m an artist who especially likes showing in bathrooms because everyone uses them. Over the years I have shown at inns and cafés just as a way to put my work into view. I can attest that never took anything away from the galleries where I have shown.
Barbara Cohen, New York City and Provincetown
