The elephant in the room is most doctors (et al) in the US seem to be functionally incompetent, because their attention has been "optimized" into (useless) 10 minute slices. And in a hospital, this goes doubly so.<p>I've started just making it a point to go with my father to his appointments, to make them actually do their job. They're all personable and knowledgeable, but also just looking to do the medical equivalent of making one tiny edit, starting a recompile, and going back to browsing the web. For example, one specialist goes through a spiel about the next step being to do a certain test - I had to remind him this was the follow up for the results. He disappeared for 5 minutes to reread the file, then came back and had the real appointment.<p>What's needed isn't "more care", it's <i>any care</i>.