I'm having BMT surgery and am looking for a place within 30 minutes of Stanford hospital.

People should go to the world famous, Mayo Clinic for cancer or other procedures. Or for cancer, MDAnderson in Houston. People from Canada fly to Mayo instead of waiting for months for their universal health care. Mayo takes care of top politicians and celebrities. The cost of living in Minnesota is very low.

When a close friend's daughter had cancer, and later, secondary leukemia, she told me that if she could do it over again she would go to Mayo instead, and rent an apartment there. Stanford and Packard make far too much use of medical students, interns, and first-year residents, WITH LITTLE OR NO SUPERVISION! Unethical for sure, possibly illegal. student doctors broke off needles in myfriend's daughter's hip bone on three occasions!!!

Teaching hospitals are great for research, but lousy for patient care. They are risky pin the safety sense, because when you have surgery you will probably have a student surgeon! They are also excessively expensive, get sued for malpractice a lot ( and lose frequently), and are often forbidden by some insurance companies.

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Again, Stanford does great research, but is lousy with actual people!

No Stanford: It's likely we will die of malpractice here. Mayo also has residents and students but they are higher quality and are carefully supervised. If our family has any serious issues, we are flying out to Mayo. The only deficient department is their general pediatrics. Rochester, MN is a small city so it's easy for visitors to navigate. It's located 1.5 hours south of Minneapolis and has its own airport (however, no direct flights). George and Barbara Bush are patients at Mayo (this is publicized in the media, no secret). I really don't miss anything about Minnesota besides the health care, children's parks and the red meat, even though Rochester is consistently ranked the #1 place to live in America. Web Link

Insurance dictates where a person can go.....unless they have bottomless pockets. I am going in for a BMT sometime in June and have been looking for housing. The prices are outrageous. How can a person just go to Mayo Clinic when their insurance has referred them to Stanford? It's well and good to suggest that....but how is that feasible? Please tell me.

Thank you, John