It probably won't surprise anyone when I say that many things here in Ukraine are totally opposite what one would expect in the states. I like to say that under the prior Soviet system, they looked at how things were done in the USA, then made everything as different as possible. I'll address many of those differences in future posts, but for now, lets state that health care here is totally opposite that in the states.
While I'll also go into those differences in the future, one enormous difference is that doctors here will make house calls. Even for routine stuff. On Wednesday this week, I had an appointment at the Boris clinic, one of the clinics favored by foreigners. But that day, my doctor fell I'll and couldn't make the appointment. My wife then arranged for the doctor to come to us for the appointment instead. The problem wasn't of an urgent nature, nor was inability to travel an issue. My wife insisted on the home visit because we had taken two hours out of our day to travel to the appointment, to wait in the waiting area, and to travel back home. But the home appointment wasn't just a courtesy for a broken appointment: I've had home appointments on other occasions.
While I may have had an occasional home appointment as a child in the US, it's save to say that I've had more home appointments in my two years in Kiev than I had in the previous three decades in the USA.
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