Abigail Zuger writes in The New York Times:

“It is increasingly critical for patients to be sick in the right place, and increasingly difficult for them to do so. As the great plates of medical care heave and split in cash-based tectonics, the options are multiplying in confusing plenty.

“There used to be the doctor’s office and the hospital. Now we have street corner wellness centers and urgent care centers, free-standing emergency rooms with no hospital attached, chain pharmacies with occasional doctors attached, and nursing practices with no doctors attached.

“We have hospitals that have merged and split and merged again into configurations that put all the cardiologists uptown, all the neurosurgeons downtown, and all the pediatricians somewhere that keeps changing.

“Accordingly, we spend a lot of time and energy getting people to where they need to be, launching them according to condition, severity and, always, insurance….”